Mesoscale models of conductivity in polymeric electrolytes - A comparative study

The studies of conductivity behavior of composite polymeric electrolytes (CPE) have been widely realized for about 15 years. There is, however, a lack of a versatile and efficient model of conductivity in these systems. The effective medium approach was introduced to predict the conductivity of systems according to some previously defined mixing rules. The main limitation of this method, however, is the fact that each new composite microstructure forces a new mixing rule development. This paper presents the random resistor network approach as an alternative method to the effective medium theory based approach. The presented comparison of both methods is based on both dc and ac simulated conductivity data. Some experimental data are introduced to compare the models with the conductivity values obtained for real samples. (c) 2007 Published by Elsevier Ltd.