Compartmental analysis of dielectric absorption in capacitors

This paper proposes a method of studying and modeling the dielectric absorption in capacitors. Because of dielectric absorption, the voltage on a charged capacitor partially recovers after momentarily shorting its terminals. The magnitude of this voltage recovery depends mainly on the dielectric material. Dielectric absorption causes errors in some analog applications based on charging and discharging of capacitors, such as sample-and-hold circuits, integrators and active filters. Designing compensation circuits based on models of the dielectric absorption can reduce these errors. This paper presents an analytical method to build a mathematical model of the dielectric absorption, and an equivalent electrical circuit. The method is based on compartmental analysis theory, mostly used in medicine and biology to study the kinetics of substances in biological systems.