Development of a conventional model to predict the electrical conductivity of polymer/carbon nanotubes nanocomposites by interphase, waviness and contact effects

A model for electrical resistivity of composites based on contacts between fibers is developed in this paper for electrical conductivity of polymer/CNT nanocomposites. The developed model considers the influences of interphase regions and CNT waviness on percolation threshold, effective CNT concentration and network dimension. Many experimental results are applied to assess the developed model. Also, the developed model is used to study the influences of all parameters on the conductivity of nanocomposite. It is shown that thin interphase and small diameter of contact area result in poor conductivity. In addition, a desirable conductivity is obtained by the high fraction of percolated CNT in the conductive network as well as the large number of contacts between nanotubes in the nanocomposite.