Debye length: Electric field screening, Peter Debye, Electrolyte, DLVO theory, Boltzmann constant, Vacuum permittivity, Relative permittivity - Tapa blanda

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. In plasma physics, the Debye length , named after the Dutch physicist and physical chemist Peter Debye, is the scale over which mobile charge carriers (e.g. electrons) screen out electric fields in plasmas and other conductors. In other words, the Debye length is the distance over which significant charge separation can occur. A Debye sphere is a volume whose radius is the Debye length, in which there is a sphere of influence, and outside of which charges are screened. The notion of Debye length plays an important role in plasma physics, electrolytes and colloids (DLVO theory). The Debye length arises naturally in considering the screening of a source of electric potential by a cloud of charged particles whose density is determined by their energy in the electrical potential. If the potential to be screened is denoted by φ, the energy of a charged particle of charge q in this potential is qφ. It is convenient to take the charge q as the elementary charge of the electron.