Wrappable, Stretchable and Transparent Photodetectors using a Printed Nanowire Network Scheme

Abstract

Flexible optoelectronics, a type of electronics that can be bended, wrapped and stretched, has attracted intensive interest and promise a variety of novel applications that are not achievable by current rigid substrates. Here we report the first fully-transparent, stretchable, and wrappable photodetector (PD) using an interlacing network nanowires scheme embedded in flexible polymer substrates by means of an all-printing approach. The devices made by ZnO nanowires, Ag nanowires and polyurethane (PU) show a transmittance over 80% in the visible region. Due to the protected junction between Ag and ZnO nanowires, the transparent PDs can work under extreme mechanical deformation, exhibiting excellent bending (bending radius < 5 mm) and stretching capability (strain > 80%). The robust nanoscale junctions enable the PD to be labeled on roughed surface or wrapped on curved surface, such as knees, noses, and optical fibers. The PD arrays wrapped on an optical fiber can serve as an optoelectronic instrument to characterize the leaky points of an optical fiber, capable of covering the blind zone of the conventional optical time domain reflectometer (OTDR) technique. The PD devices fabricated on curved surface can also treated as contact lens with bio-related applications. The PD would be a key electronic component directly to be implemented in the flexible electronic systems, such as wearable electronics, self-powered systems, functional clothes, and epidermal electronics.