Figure 2.

Dynamics of fixed-voltage superthreshold activation in PVP-Ag nanowire networks. (a) Left: Generated nanowire network displayed in a 100 × 100 µm² two-dimensional grid, with two probes acting as electrodes. Blue lines represent nanowires and red dots represent junctions between two nanowires. Right: Graph representation of the network simulated on the left by using a force-directed layout. Edges are drawn in yellow and nodes in black. The edges drawn as green lines represent the topological shortest path between the two electrodes. Labels ‘1’ and ‘2’ mark the position of the electrodes. (b) Current vs. time measurement of network after applying a constant voltage of 3 V between electrodes. Two insets show a zoom-in section of the activation curve during two different time regions, highlighting particular features observed during the activation sequence. (c) Simulated time series of the network in (a), after applying a fixed interelectrode voltage of 3 V. Inset shows overplotted experimental (blue) and simulated (orange) activation curves. Two vertical lines, labeled as t1 (red) and t2 (blue) mark two selected time points during the activation sequence, at which the network state is represented in graph form in (d,e), respectively. (d) Voltage potential distribution colormap across the network nodes (nanowires, top) and the activated junctions (red edges) at t1. (e) Activated junctions (red edges) in the network at t2.