Highly Conductive and Stretchable Composite Using Ultra-long Silver Nanowires, Elastomer, and Fluorosurfactant

Abstract

The stretchable conductor which has higher conductivity and stretchability are needed with recent development of wearable device and robot industry. Here, the highly conductive and stretchable composite was developed using ultra-long silver nanowires, styrene-butadiene-styrene, and zonyl, a fluorosurfactant. Silver nanowire is considered a fascinating candidate as conductive filler for stretchable conductor composite due to its high intrinsic conductivity and high-aspect-ratio, which enables the conductivity to maintain stably under deformation of the composite. The ultra-long silver nanowires were used in this study, and consequently the merits of silver nanowire could be enlarged. The ligand-exchange reaction was applied to the ultra-long silver nanowires and the ligand-exchanged ultra-long silver nanowires formed homogeneous mixture with styrene-butadiene-styrene. This ultra-long silver nanowires/SBS composite showed high conductivity of over 30,000 S/cm and stretchability of ~45% without introduction of structure for stretchability. In addition, Zonyl was added to the composite and enhanced the stretchability of the composite by separating into conductive and stretchable regions and making micro-porous structure. As a consequence, the composites which has stretchability of ~450% with initial conductivity of ~20,000 S/cm and stretchability of ~100% with initial conductivity of ~29,000 S/cm were achieved. The simple application as stretchable interconnects using the composite was demonstrated and the composite showed stable performance under stretched condition.