Tuning the electrical percolation threshold of polymer nanocomposites with rod-like nanofillers

Published Date
Polymer
5 August 2016, Vol.97:295–299, doi:10.1016/j.polymer.2016.05.041
Short communication

• Author 

• Vijay Kumar ¹
 
• Amit Rawal ^,,

• Department of Textile Technology, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Hauz Khas, New Delhi, India

Received 29 January 2016. Revised 13 May 2016. Accepted 14 May 2016. Available online 15 May 2016.

Highlights

• •
  Predicted the percolation threshold of nanofillers using stochastic approach.
• •
  Anisotropic behavior of 3D aligned nanofillers was successfully introduced.
• •
  A comparison has been made between theoretical and results obtained from literature.

Abstract

In this communication, a stochastic approach based upon Komori and Makishima’s work has been used for predicting the electrical percolation threshold of cylindrical nanofillers with three-dimensional (3D) spatial orientations in a typical nanocomposite system. Specifically, the proposed model was able to predict the volume fraction based percolation threshold of nanofillers with a wide range of aspect ratios (10–1000), which was substantiated with a variety of experimental data sets obtained from the literature. The anisotropic behavior of 3D aligned nanofillers was successfully introduced via in-plane and out-of-plane orientation distributions. The percolation threshold values of nanofillers were also found to be comparable with those obtained from the stochastic model that has incorporated the excluded volume effect.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

• Percolation threshold
• Nanofiller
• Stochastic

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• DOCX (136K)

• ∗ 
  Corresponding author. Fraunhofer Institute of Industrial Mathematics (ITWM), Fraunhofer-Platz 1, D-67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany.

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