2006/02/28 by Tao Hu, Alexander Y. Grosberg, A. Yu. Grosberg +2
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Engineering · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Composite material #Condensed matter physics #Conductivity #Diffusion #Electrical resistivity and conductivity #Geometry #Lipid Membrane Structure and Behavior #Materials science #Mathematics #Nanopore and Nanochannel Transport Studies #Nanotechnology #Nanowire #Physics #Quantum mechanics #RNA Research and Splicing #Scaling #Sigma #Suspension (topology) #Thermal conductivity #Thermodynamics #Volume (thermodynamics) #Volume fraction #cond-mat.soft
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.73.155434
published as Phys. Rev. B 73, 155434 (2006) · 9 pages, 5 figures
arxiv created 2006/04/04 · openalex publication_date 2006/04/27 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We study the macroscopic electrical conductivity of a composite made of straight or coiled nanowires suspended in a poorly conducting medium. We assume that the volume fraction of the wires is so large that spaces occupied by them overlap, but there is still enough room to distribute the wires isotropically. We found a wealth of scaling regimes at different ratios of conductivities of the wire, \ensuremathσ1, and of the medium, \ensuremathσ2, lengths of wires, and their persistent lengths and volume fractions. There are large ranges of parameters where macroscopic conductivity is proportional to (\ensuremathσ1\ensuremathσ2)1∕2. These results are directly applicable to the calculation of the macroscopic diffusion constant of nonspecific DNA-binding proteins in semidilute DNA solution.