Connectivity percolation in suspensions of hard platelets

We present a study on connectivity percolation in suspensions of hard platelets by means of Monte Carlo simulation. We interpret our results using a contact-volume argument based on an effective single-particle cell model. It is commonly assumed that the percolation threshold of anisotropic objects scales as their inverse aspect ratio. While this rule has been shown to hold for rodlike particles, we find that for hard platelike particles the percolation threshold is nonmonotonic in the aspect ratio. It exhibits a shallow minimum at intermediate aspect ratios and then saturates to a constant value. This effect is caused by the isotropic-nematic transition preempting the percolation transition. Hence the common strategy to use highly anisotropic, conductive particles as fillers in composite materials in order to produce conduction at low filler concentration is expected to fail for platelike fillers such as graphene and graphite nanoplatelets.