Maximum possible force between two electrically charged plates?

[Bobcent]

Hi!

What is the limit to how much you can electrically charge two plates? I want to create the maximum possible force between the two plates per kilogram of plate.

Say that the plates are separated by a good vacuum, because that is the best insulator, right? The plates are also surrounded by vacuum.

Does it highly depend on the material being used for the plate? I'm investigating Carbon Fiber.

Is the problem that it is hard to generate the high voltage needed to create the charge?

Or is the problem rather that after a certain point the negatively charged plate will start to "leak" a large amount electrons to the positively charged plate? If this is the problem, why not just make both plates positively charged? I don't care if the plates attract or repel each other, I just want to create a really strong force between them.

And also, if these plates were to rotate at a very high speed (say 10 km/s), would this create a magnetic field? I have learned that magnetic fields are a relativistic effect of electrical fields in motion, but how fast do the plates need to rotate before significant magnetic fields develop?

I know this is a lot of questions, but I'm really grateful for any respone to any of them! :)

 

[__Adam]

This is an interesting question, I never considered the upper limit of charge before. After a bit of searching, I found this paper:

http://erps.spacegrant.org/uploads/images/images/iepc_articledownload_1988-2007/2009index/IEPC-2009-010.pdf

The mention three phenomenon which you may be concerned with:

http://www.nims.go.jp/apfim/fieldevap.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_electron_emission
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coulomb_explosion

 

[Bobcent]

Hello, and thanks for your reply, very interesting article!

So according to this article the limit of positive charge for an iron particle before coulomb explosion occurs is generated by a potential of +20 kV.

So if I have a plate composed of iron with a mass of say 1 kg, and charge it so that its potential is +20 kV, how do I calculate its charge?