A highly stretchable, helical copper nanowire conductor exhibiting a stretchability of 700%

Abstract

Jooho Moon, Sunho Jeong and colleagues in South Korea have fabricated conducting meshes and extremely stretchable helices from copper nanowires. Metallic nanowires that are randomly entangled with each other in flexible meshes are of interest as electrical conductors for stretchable electronics. The researchers from Yonsei University and the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology fabricated nanowires made of copper with a simple and scalable process based on room-temperature chemical synthesis. When the nanowires were deposited on a flexible polymer substrate, the resulting meshes could stretch to up to twice their original size. When shaped as a helix, the nanowires showed an even greater stretchability of up to 700%. Being more cost-efficient than the silver nanowires used previously for similar applications, these copper nanowires hold a great promise for stretchable electronic circuits or in wearable electronics.