A comprehensive picture of the electrical phenomena in carbon black–polymer composites Original Research Article

The electrical conductivity of carbon black–polymer composites was found to depend on the structure of the carbon black particles and to deviate from the expectations of classical percolation theory. We have recently proposed a comprehensive percolation-tunneling model that explains semi-quantitatively all these observations. The central observations and the model are reviewed here. Our resistance-noise measurements have shown that, unlike this model, existing alternative models cannot account for the observations.