ANALYSIS OF THERMALLY STIMULATED CURRENTS

While thermally stimulated depolarization currents, sometimes in conju nction with the thermal slicing technique, are often used to determine the activation energies and relaxation times of the processes occurri ng in a material, little attention has been paid to the question of wh ether the results do represent the true properties of the system. In t his paper, a theoretical analysis and the results of calculations are presented for systems whose isothermal behaviour can be described in t erms of a distribution of relaxation times (DRT). It is found that for a DRT with a common activation energy E(O), the activation energy E(B O) derived from the Bucci or BFG relaxation time is often less than E( O), while if the DRT is associated with a distribution of activation e nergies the prefactor of the BFG relaxation time often differs from it s true value. Simple criteria are proposed for establishing whether th e parameters derived from any given set of measurements do in fact cor respond to those of the system, and for distinguishing between a DRT w ith a distribution of activation energies and one with a single activa tion energy.