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Conductive rubber composites usually suffer a large filler content and relatively low conductivity because the uniform dispersion of conductive nanofillers in rubbers is probably inhibited by the cross-link networks. However, by establishing a double-network model of cross-link and conductive networks, we found the connection of one-dimensional nanofillers could be improved by cross-link networks, which stabilized the conductive network. The percolation value of nanofillers could reduce to 0.06 wt % in experiments, using carbon nanotubes (CNTs) with 9.5 nm diameter and 1.5 μm length as nanofillers and poly(dimethylsiloxane) as the matrix. Moreover, the conductive network owned a critical exponent of 5.63, which was higher than that of conventional conductive networks (ca. 2). This feature proved that the connection between CNTs was improved by the poly(dimethylsiloxane) cross-link network. This work subverted the fundamental conception that cross-link networks in rubbers should make fillers aggregate, and we believed it would conduce to the development of sensors and flexible devices of rubber composites.
Gan et al. (Thu,) studied this question.