Origin of the Curie-von Schweidler law and the fractional capacitor from time-varying capacitance

Abstract

Most dielectrics of practical purpose exhibit memory and are described by the century-old Curie-von Schweidler law. Interestingly, the Curie-von Schweidler law is the motivation behind an unconventional circuit component called fractional capacitor which due to its power-law property is extensively used in the modeling of complex dielectric media. Unfortunately, the empirical nature of the Curie-von Schweidler law plagues the applications of the fractional capacitor. Here, we derive the Curie-von Schweidler law from a series combination of a resistor and a capacitor with a linear time-varying capacitance. This may possibly be its first derivation from physical principles. However, this required a modification of the classical charge--voltage relation of a capacitor to account for the time-varying capacitance. The limitation of the classical charge-voltage relation and its subsequent modification are justified using appropriate circuit modeling. Consequently, the parameters of the Curie-von Schweidler law and the fractional capacitor gain physical interpretation. The Debye response of dielectrics emerges naturally from the limiting case of the power-law response at short timescales. The obtained results are validated by matching them with the published experimental reports.