Résumé:

The 14th International Symposium on Electrets (ISE 14) was held at Montpellier (France) during 28-31 August 2011, preceded by a Workshop on the 27th August entitled “Electrets and Related Phenomena in Life Sciences". Both the Symposium and the Workshop were held in historical buildings belonging to the University of Montpellier. The workshop and the symposium attracted 30 and 125 attendees, respectively, from 27 countries. The Symposium attendees were invited to a welcoming party on the evening of Sunday 28th August at the “Maison des Relations Internationales”, hosted by the Montpellier City Council. The scientific program of the Symposium consisted of ten oral and two poster sessions, with a total of 116 contributions distributed over 10 topics. The topics were Charge injection, transport and trapping, Thermally stimulated current and dielectric relaxation, Nanoscale measurements of electrostatic phenomena, Electret phenomena in nanocomposite materials, Ferro-, piezo- and pyroelectric phenomena, Electrostatic and dielectric phenomena in life sciences and bioelectrets, Non-linear electrical and optical effects and photoelectrets, Applications of thin film ferroelectrets, Electrets in organic electronics, and Soft actuators and sensors. Three plenary and ten keynote lectures were given by internationally recognized speakers. In particular, the Gross Memorial Lecture entitled “The legacy of Gross - the analysis and use of long-term phenomena” was given by Professor Jan van Turnout from the Technical University of Delft, The Netherlands. The Dilip Das-Gupta award, which is presented at each ISE for the best presentation by a young scientist or engineer, was shared by Dr. Eric Dantras from the University of Toulouse, France, for his oral presentation “Electroactive properties of polyamide/sodium nobiate nanowires composites” and his contribution to the poster “Thermally stimulated currents: a method to identify gene mutation in Arabidopsis thaliana”, and Dr. Gregorio Faria from the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, for his oral presentation “Dispersive to non-dispersive transition in the drift mobility of F8BT-based thin-film device” and his poster “Molecular structure and dynamics of F8BT – correlation with opto-electronic properties”. This special issue of the Transaction on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation (TDEI) gathers papers which are the extended form of some the contributions, oral and poster, presented at ISE 14. After undergoing a meticulous review process, 29 papers were selected to be included in this issue. They represent the state-of-the-art about Electrets Science. As the reader will notice, this science is a truly interdisciplinary subject going from electrical engineering, materials physics and chemistry to biology. As the Chairs of this symposium and guest co-editors of this issue, we aimed at equally covering all this topics with both the fundamental as well as the applied aspects. This editorial gives us the opportunity to deeply thank Ms. Nathalie Cros, Dr. Francois Bauer and Dr. Gilbert Teyssedre who did actively participate in the organization of ISE 14. We would also like to acknowledge Ms. Lydie Berardo, Samira El-Ghazi, Ioana Preda as well as Profs. Colette Lacabanne, Alain Toureille and Jean-Victor Zanchetta and Drs. Eric Dantras and Philippe Molinié for their fruitful help and advice. We are also very grateful to Prof. Takeo Furukawa who was the chairman of ISE 13 and who always positively responded to our questions concerning the organization of the symposium. Likewise, we greatly appreciated Professors Robert Fleming and Reimund Gerhard’s suggestions. Finally, we would like to sincerely thank Ms. Rezi Zarb, IEEE-Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Society (DEIS) Meetings Chair and Dr. Reuben Hackam, TDEI Editor-in-Chief, for their constant efforts and productive contributions concerning the symposium organization and preparation of this issue, respectively.