Extracting the Temperature Dependence of Both Nanowire Resistivity and Junction Resistance from Electrical Measurements on Printed Silver Nanowire Networks

Abstract

Printed networks of nanoparticles (e.g., nanodots, nanowires, nanosheets) are important for a range of electronic, sensing and energy storage applications. Characterizing the temperature dependence of both the nanoparticle resistivity (ρNW) and interparticle junction resistance (RJ) in such networks is crucial for understanding the conduction mechanism and so for optimizing network properties. However, it is challenging to extract both ρNW and RJ from standard electrical measurements. Here, using silver nanowires (AgNWs) as a model system, we describe a broadly applicable method to extract both parameters from resistivity measurements on nanowire networks. We achieve this by combining a simple theoretical model with temperature-dependent resistivity measurements on sets of networks fabricated from nanowires of different lengths. As expected, our results demonstrate that RJ is the predominant bottleneck for charge transport within these networks, with RNW/RJ in the range 0.03–0.7.