One particularly promising model of electrical properties of conductive nanocomposites involves a combined quantum tunneling/percolation approach. However, two key inputs to the model-the polymer matrix barrier height and the average gap between conductive filler particles-are difficult to determine experimentally. This article demonstrates improved methods for determining barrier height in polymer materials via conductive nanoindentation, with barrier heights measured between 0.4 and 1.7 eV for five different polymers. By using dielectric spectroscopy techniques, combined with the barrier height measurements, the average junction gap was determined for the first time for nickel-nanostrand nanocomposites with six different polymer matrices; the values range from 1.31 to 3.28 nm. Using those measured values for barrier height and junction gap distances in a simple model, we have tested predictions for bulk resistivity of six polymers. The model worked well for four of the six, which suggests that for a given volume fraction of filler, knowledge of the barrier height and the junction distance may in many cases be sufficient to provide an estimate of the bulk resistivity of the polymer-nanostrand blend, an important parameter in nanocomposite engineering.
a b s t r a c tWhen nickel nanostrands (NiNs) are embedded inside of highly flexible silicone, the silicone becomes an extremely piezoresistive sensor capable of measuring a large dynamic range of strains. These sensors experience an increase in conductance of several orders of magnitude when strained to 40% elongation. It has been hypothesized that this effect stems from a net change in average junction distance between the conductive particles when the overall material is strained. The quantum tunneling resistance across these gaps is highly sensitive to junction distance, resulting in the immense piezoresistive effect. In this paper, the average junction distance is monitored using dielectric spectroscopy while the material is strained. By incorporating new barrier height measurements of the base silicone material from a nanoindentation experiment, this experiment validates previous assumptions that, on average, the junctions between NiNs decrease while the sample is strained, instigating the large piezoresistive effect. The nature of the material's response to strain is explored and discussed.
A perturbed angular correlation (PAC) experiment that measures dynamic damping also needs information about the fundamental quadrupole frequency to relate the damping as a function of temperature to the EFG fluctuation rate. When the experiment is unable to access slow electric field gradient (EFG) fluctuations that show the fundamental quadrupole frequency directly, one needs additional information to determine the hyperfine field parameters and thereby the connection between observed damping and EFG fluctuation rates. One way to solve this problem is to estimate the hyperfine parameters from the fluctuation rate for maximum damping (i.e. at the relaxation peak) or from the rate of maximum damping. This work relates both the maximum damping rate and the fluctuation rate at the relaxation peak to EFG magnitudes (or quadrupole frequencies) for five dynamic N-state symmetric models of fluctuating EFGs.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.