Surface conduction and absorption currents in polymers

Numerical computation of the current flow across polymer surfaces has been carried out, on the basis of a variety of assumptions about the nature of the surface conductivity. The motive for this calculation was to determine whether a recent suggestion, that absorption currents in insulators are due to surface conduction, can be reconciled with the observed time dependence and reversibility of the current. Although the calculated behaviour of the absorption currents is not very different from that found experimentally, there remains a significant discrepancy.