Therefore, a dimensionless parameter defined as Baf-A1 chemical structure Figure of merit was proposed to indicate the current-carrying ability of the mesh. The consistent figure of merit during the whole melting process of both meshes implies that the melting behavior of the MM-102 datasheet nanowire mesh is predictable from that of the microwire mesh by simple conversion. The present findings provide fundamental insight into the reliability analysis on the

metallic nanowire mesh hindered by difficult sample preparation and experimental measurement, which will be helpful to develop ideal metallic nanowire mesh-based TCE with considerable reliability. Methods A previous numerical method [27] was employed to investigate the melting behavior of an Ag microwire mesh and compared with that of the corresponding

VX-680 supplier nanowire mesh which has the same mesh structure (e.g., pitch size, segment number, and boundary conditions) but different geometrical and physical properties of the wire itself (e.g., cross-sectional area, thermal conductivity, electrical resistivity, and melting point). The mesh structure is illustrated in Figure  1. It is a regular network with 10 columns and 10 rows, which indicates that the mesh size M@N is 10@10. The pitch size l is 200 μm, making the mesh area S of 3.24 × 106 μm2. A mesh node (i, j) denoted by integral coordinates (0 ≤ i ≤ M - 1, 0 ≤ j ≤ N - 1) is the intersection of the (i + 1)th column and the selleck compound (j + 1)th row in the mesh. A mesh segment is the wire between two adjacent mesh nodes. For simplicity, the segments on the left, right, downside, and upside of the mesh node (i, j) are denoted by , , , and , respectively. Obviously, there are M × N = 100 mesh nodes and M(N - 1) + N(M - 1) = 180 mesh segments. Figure 1 Structure of a wire mesh with size of 10@10 and its electrical boundary conditions. The electrical boundary conditions are also shown in Figure  1. The load current I is input from node (0, 0) and is output from node (9, 0) with zero electrical potential at node (9, 9). Moreover, there is no external input/output current

for all the other nodes. For the thermal boundary conditions, the temperature of the peripheral nodes (i.e., (i, 0), (0, j), (i, 9), (9, j)) is set at room temperature (RT, T 0 = 300 K), while there is no external input/output heat energy for all the other nodes. The geometrical and physical properties of the wires are listed in Table  1. Here, A is the cross-sectional area calculated from the side length w of the wire with the square cross section, T m is the melting point, λ is the thermal conductivity, and ρ is the electrical resistivity with the subscripts ‘0’ and ‘m’ representing the value at T 0 and T m. Note that ρ m [=ρ 01 + α(T m - T 0)] is calculated by using the temperature coefficient of resistivity α. Note that the bulk values of Ag were employed for the microwire, while size effect was taken into account for the nanowire.