Cascade Model of Conduction Instability and Giant Fluctuations in Polymer Materials and Nanocomposites

A new cascade model of polymer composite materials giant current fluctuations is developed on the basis of published representable set of experimental data. This qualitative model describes the “anomalous” features of the conduction of polymer nanocomposites, in particular, conduction many orders of magnitude self-switching to the conducting state in polymer films including relatively thick up to tens of microns or more. The development is achieved by combining well known model of hopping conduction mechanism with experimental data of soft reversible electric breakdown. With much simplification the instability can be explained as follows: dividing the distance between electrodes on conducting islands (with constant potential with zero electric field) and insulating gaps (where electric field is higher than average level). In such a system we obtain “instability” - type correlation of electric field in the adjacent insulating gaps: one gap microbreakdown increases the field strength in the adjacent gaps.