Insulator-Conductor Transition: A Brief Theoretical Review

TL;DR

This paper reviews key theories on the insulator-conductor transition in disordered composites, highlighting ongoing uncertainties in understanding their electrical conductivity despite decades of research.

Contribution

It provides a comparative overview of theoretical models and experimental results related to the critical insulator-conductor transition.

Findings

Different theories predict varying behaviors near the transition

Experimental results show partial agreement with theoretical models

Some properties of dc bulk conductivity remain not fully understood

Abstract

The electrical conductivity of disordered insulator-conductor composites have been studied for more than thirty years. In spite of this some properties of dc bulk conductivity of composites still remain incompletely understood. We present a brief review of the most significant theories that have been proposed to study the critical insulator-conductor transition comparing their predictions with many experimental results.