Effect of nanowire curviness on the resistance of nanowire-based networks: a computational study

Abstract We have studied the impact of nanowire curviness on the percolation threshold and the effective resistance ( R eff ) of two-dimensional films with their application as transparent electrodes. We have generated highly conductive zero-width curvy nanowires as one-dimensional rods on the non-conducting substrate. The resistivity of the network is found using the percolation theory. The length ( l ref ) of a nanowire is assumed to be constant i.e. 1 unit whereas the system length is varied from 16 to 64 units. The maximum angle of curvatures ( θ c ) of a nanowire is considered in our computations to quantify the degree of curviness. We have used two different methods to generate curvy nanowires. We have found that as the system length decreases, the effective resistance also decreases. It is also observed that the R eff of the network at fixed system lengths is slightly more for higher angles of curvature of a nanowire. It can be said that curviness in nanowires is not desirable for randomly oriented systems as it doesn’t affect the conductivity of networks much. Our results also show that the effect of curvature on transmittance depends on how the curvy nanowire is generated. We have also investigated the impact of length dispersity on the nanowire-based network by introducing longer-length curvy wires in the system. The incorporation of bidisperse distribution in length seems to improve the performance of these networks in terms of electrical and optical properties. Our work can be extended to any network, nanocomposites, and films with fillers such as nanowires or nanorods.