The effect of structure on the conductivity of disordered carbon (the case of graphene-containing shungite)

Abstract

Understanding the mechanisms of conductivity in disordered carbon materials is one key to creating applied materials based on them. We present a new promising approach to quantitatively assessing the effect of structural parameters on the conductivity of disordered sp2 carbon materials within the framework of a simplified current tube model. Stacks of graphene layers of complex shape and chaotic in contacts as an aggregate of sequentially located and parallel tubes were presented. This approximation made it possible to obtain a reliable quantitative estimate of the influence of the stacks size of graphene layers and their size distribution, as well as the size of the gaps between the stacks on the conductivity. The theoretical positions of the model were tested using the experimentally obtained parameters of the structure of two typical natural disordered carbon materials (shungites).