Table 1 Physical properties of an Ag nanowire Physical properties Value find more melting point T m (K) 873 [14] Thermal conductivity at R.T. λ (W/μm∙K) 3.346 × 10−4[10] Electrical resistivity at R.T. ρ 0 (Ω∙μm) 0.119 [7] Temperature coefficient of resistivity α (/K) 0.0038 In addition, the following working conditions are specified in the present study. The external current flows into the mesh from node (0, 0) and flows out of the mesh from node (9, 0), which means that node (0, 0) has an selleck kinase inhibitor external input current and node (9, 0) has an external output current (see Figure 4). For all the other nodes, there is no external input or output current. A constant electrical potential
is assigned to node (9, 9). The temperature of the boundary nodes ((i, 0), (0, j), (i, 9), www.selleckchem.com/products/azd0156-azd-0156.html (9, j) in which i, j = 0,…, 9) is set at room temperature of 300 K. For all of the other nodes, there is no any external input or output heat energy. Using the developed computational program, the temperature in the Ag nanowire mesh can be monitored, allowing for determination of the melting current. The input current, I, is
increased with a ΔI value of 0.001 mA to cause the mesh segments to melt one at a time if possible. The corresponding melting current and melting voltage (i.e., the difference in electrical potential between node (0, 0) and node (9, 0)) are recorded as melting current I m and melting voltage V m, respectively. Using the relationship between I m and V m, the variation in mesh resistance R throughout the melting process could be calculated. Numerical analysis of the failure behavior of the mesh The as-obtained relationship between melting current DNA Damage inhibitor I m and melting voltage V m and the calculated mesh resistance R versus the number of the broken segments during the whole melting process are shown in Figure 5a,b, respectively.
To clearly observe the changing trend in I m, the starting stage and the ending stage of the melting process in Figure 5a are enlarged in Figure 5c,d, respectively. Although a repeated zigzag pattern is observed in the relationship between I m and V m, R increases steadily during the melting process, in spite of the changing trend in I m. Figure 5 Numerical analysis results for the melting process of the Ag nanowire mesh. (a) Variation of the melting current and melting voltage, (b) variation of the mesh resistance, (c) starting stage, and (d) ending stage. Initially, as the input current increases, the temperature of the mesh increases gradually. Moreover, the temperature at different locations of different segment should be different. When the maximum temperature in the mesh T max reaches the melting point T m of the nanowire, the corresponding mesh segment melts and breaks. This process is similar to the melting of an individual nanowire. As shown in Figure 5c, when the input current increases up to 0.126 mA, the Ag nanowire mesh starts to melt.