Conductivity of Diblock Copolymer System Filled with Conductive Fillers

Abstract

The electrical response of the insulating diblock copolymer system (DBC) filled with conductive spherical fillers is investigated to the variation of the following factors: i) composite temperature; ii) affinities of fillers for copolymer blocks; iii) interaction between fillers. By performing the consistent phase‐field and Monte‐Carlo simulations of the filled DBC system, this article quantitatively demonstrates that the distribution of fillers in DBC essentially depends on the complicated interplay of the above three factors. The obtained distribution of filler particles, in turn, proves to be directly related to the electrical response of the DBC‐particle composite, calculated by the developed model. In particular, the order‐disorder transition in the DBC system has been found to co‐occur with the insulator‐conductor transition in the filler network providing a sufficient difference between the affinities of fillers for dissimilar DBC blocks. The order–order transition between the lamella and cylindrical morphologies of DBC has been found to cause a spike in the composite conductivity.