This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages) This article is an orphan, as no other articles link to it. Please introduce links to this page from related articles. (October 2019) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Pauthenier equation" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (June 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this message) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The Pauthenier equation states ^[1][2] that the maximum charge accumulated by a particle modelled by a small sphere passing through an electric field is given by:

${\displaystyle Q_{\mathrm {max} }=4\pi R^{2}\epsilon _{0}pE}$

where ${\displaystyle \epsilon _{0}}$ is the permittivity of free space, ${\displaystyle R}$ is the radius of the sphere, ${\displaystyle E}$ is the electric field strength, and ${\displaystyle p}$ is a material dependent constant.

For conductors, ${\displaystyle p=3}$.

For dielectrics: ${\displaystyle p=3\epsilon _{r}/(\epsilon _{r}+2)}$ where ${\displaystyle \epsilon _{r}}$ is the relative permittivity.

Low charges on nanoparticles and microparticles are stable over more than 10³ second time scales.

This particle physics–related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information.

• v
• t
• e