Anisotropy in electrical conductivity and transparency of films of aligned conducting rods

TL;DR

This study uses Monte Carlo simulations to explore how the alignment of rodlike particles in a 2D composite influences electrical conductivity and anisotropy, revealing potential for transparent, highly anisotropic conducting films.

Contribution

It introduces a continuous model with discretization for simulating aligned rods and demonstrates the impact of alignment on electrical anisotropy in composites.

Findings

Alignment significantly affects electrical conductivity and anisotropy.

Discrete simulation methods are crucial for accurate results.

High anisotropy observed at low filler content in slightly disordered systems.

Abstract

Numerical simulations by means of the Monte Carlo method have been performed to study the electrical properties of a two-dimensional composite filled with rodlike particles. The main goal was to study the effect of the alignment of such rods on the anisotropy of its electrical conductivity. A continuous model was used. In this model, the rods have zero-width (i.e. infinite aspect ratio) and they may intersect each other. To involve both the low conductive host matrix, and highly conductive fillers (rods) in the consideration, a discretization algorithm based on the use of a supporting mesh was applied. The discretization is equivalent to the substitution of rods with the polyominoes. Once discretized, the Frank--Lobb algorithm was applied to evaluate the electrical conductivity. Our main findings are (i) the alignment of the rods essentially affects the electrical conductivity and its anisotropy, (ii)the discrete nature of computer simulations is crucial. For slightly disordered system, high electrical anisotropy was observed at small filler content, suggesting a method to enable the production of optically transparent and highly anisotropic conducting films.