Immittance Spectroscopy: Applications to Material Systems

This book emphasizes the use of four complex plane formalisms (impedance, admittance, complex capacitance, and modulus) in a simultaneous fashion. The purpose of employing these complex planes for handling semicircular relaxation using a single set of measured impedance data (ac small-signal electrical data) is highly underscored. The current literature demonstrates the importance of template version of impedance plot whereas this book reflects the advantage of using concurrent four complex plane plots for the same data. This approach allows extraction of a meaningful equivalent circuit model attributing to possible interpretations via potential polarizations and operative mechanisms for the investigated material system. Thus, this book supersedes the limitations of the impedance plot, and intends to serve a broader community of scientific and technical professionals better for their solid and liquid systems.

This book addresses the following highlighted contents for the measured data but not limited to the:-

(1) Lumped Parameter/Complex Plane Analysis (LP/CPA) in conjunction with the Bode plots;

(2) Equivalent circuit model (ECM) derived from the LP/CPA;

(3) Underlying Operative Mechanisms along with the possible interpretations;

(4) Ideal (Debye) and non-ideal (non-Debye) relaxations; and

Mohammad A. Alim is a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science at Alabama A & M University (AAMU) where he joined as one of the founding faculty members in August 1998. He earned MS in Physics and PhD in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science from Marquette University in 1980 and 1986, respectively. Dr. Alim is a single-handed pioneering developer of the concurrent multiple complex plane analysis of the measured ac small-signal electrical data. His approach demonstrated lumped-parameter/complex-plane-analysis employing complex nonlinear least squares (CNLS) fitting using Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm. The achievement of the frequency-independent dielectric behavior for the polycrystalline varistors was a milestone. This outstanding work has been highly cited for a variety of complicated material systems. Thus, the immittance (impedance or admittance) spectroscopy turned to a powerful non-destructive tool in delineating underlying operative competing phenomena in a variety of material systems and devices. Most recently Dr. Alim had been instrumental in developing collaboratively MATLAB based CNLS curve fitting. His long time exposure in experiments with the state-of-the-art instruments and knowledge in supervision and maintenance is the asset for the semiconductor measurements and reverse engineering curricula. He possesses 100+ publications comprising of co-edited books, book chapters, NASA Technical Memorandum, peer reviewed journal papers, U.S. patents, and conference proceedings/abstracts, etc. beside international seminars.