Two-Stage Electrical Percolation of Metal Nanoparticle–Polymer Nanocomposites
- Resource Type
- Authors
- Faling Zhang; Chun Tang; Chengyuan Wang; Tiger Sun; Guotong Wang; Xiaozhu Yu
- Source
- The Journal of Physical Chemistry C. 122:8614-8620
- Subject
- Materials science
Polymer nanocomposite
Stretchable electronics
Nanoparticle
02 engineering and technology
Electron
Conductivity
010402 general chemistry
021001 nanoscience & nanotechnology
01 natural sciences
0104 chemical sciences
Surfaces, Coatings and Films
Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
symbols.namesake
General Energy
Chemical physics
Percolation
symbols
Physical and Theoretical Chemistry
van der Waals force
0210 nano-technology
Quantum tunnelling
- Language
- ISSN
- 1932-7455
1932-7447
Recent experiments showed that gold nanoparticle (NP)–polymer composite exhibits excellent properties such as high stretchability and electron conductivity, rendering this novel material promising for bendable and stretchable electronics and optoelectronics. Theoretical models have been proposed to investigate the conduction mechanism; however, the role of the quantum tunneling effect in electrical percolation remains unclear. Here, we used a numerical approach together with Monte Carlo sampling to investigate the percolation of the gold NP–polymer system. The effects of the electron tunneling and the inter-NP van der Waals interaction were considered in the model. A distinct two-stage electrical percolation behavior is identified because of the effect of electron tunneling at the nanoscale. Such an effect is found to be dependent on the radii of gold NPs and becomes negligible when the radius is larger than 195 nm. The observed behavior is also sensitive to the potential barrier height of the hosting pol...