Piezoresistance in polymer nanocomposites with high aspect ratio particles

In this paper, we address the problem of positive piezoresistance in high aspect ratio particle based polymer nanocomposites, a hybrid system at the center of research on flexible piezoresistive materials. We introduce a percolation theory based model relating the variation in electrical resistance to compressive strain and show that it gives accurate theoretical fits to experimental data presented in this paper, as well as to much of the available data in the literature. In contrast to existing theories, the model captures the characteristics of the particle network through experimentally definable parameters and does not rely on assumptions regarding the nature of the particles and/or the configuration of the network. It is further demonstrated that the presented theoretical framework is not limited to polymer nanocomposites with high aspect ratio particle but that it can explain piezoresistance in bulk electroconductive polymer nanocomposites in general. We find that the piezoresistive effect in such materials is rooted in a mechanical deformation induced change in the distribution of local conductances within the particle network, and we show that this change in the distribution of local conductances is well described by a strain dependent conductivity exponent, which scales with the magnitude of mechanical deformation. Besides, we demonstrate that these findings can be applied to the experimentally observed concentration dependence of the piezoresistance in polymer nanocomposites and, thus, to predicting the electric response to mechanical deformation at any particle concentration, which is expected to be highly instrumental in applied materials selection and performance evaluation.