# Mechanism by which a capacitor is charged, using surface charges

I want to gain a deeper understanding as to how a capacitor actually gets charged.

Consider a situation in which an uncharged parallel plate capacitor is connected to a battery using two wires. I know that charges will keep flowing until the time comes when the potential of each plate equals the potential of the corresponding battery terminal. At this stage the net field in the wire becomes zero, and no more current flows.

1. Can anyone explain how this actually happens using surface charges in the wires?

2. Just before charges accumulate on the capacitor plate, do they decelerate? If so, what causes this deceleration? Since we started off with a neutral capacitor, the net field produced by the positive and negative plates at an external point should be zero. So how do the electrons suddenly lose the kinetic energy they initially had? Can this be explained by surface charges as well?

Please correct me wherever I am conceptually wrong.

$$F=\frac{dU}{dx}$$