A comprehensive picture of the electrical phenomena in carbon black-polymer composites

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. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.