We have seen that in Maxwell’s equation, σE⃗ is conduction current density while the term iωǫE⃗ is the displacement current density. This suggest that the value of the ratio σ/ωǫ is a good measure to divide whether a material is a dielectric or a metal. For good conductors this ratio is much larger than 1 over the entire radio frequency spectrum. For instance, at a frequency as high as 30, 000 MHz, Cu has σ/ωǫ ≃ 108 while for the same frequency this ratio is 0.0002 for mica.
For good conductors, we take σ/ωǫ ≫ 1. We have, in this limit