Highly conductive, flexible and stretchable conductors based on fractal silver nanostructures

Abstract

The emergence of flexible and stretchable conductors provides a direction for future development of wearable electronics, because they play a fundamental role in flexible and stretchable electronic devices. Herein, we fabricated a flexible and stretchable conductor by embedding fractal-structured silver particles in a PDMS substrate. The flexible and stretchable conductor can stretch up to 100% and bend and twist up to 180°, and it also possesses a good mechanical stability. Interestingly, the resistance of this conductor decreases under bending and twisting conditions. The change trend of resistance of the conductor can be negligible under 100 cycles of stretching at a strain of 30% and 100 tape test cycles. In addition, a flexible and stretchable LED circuit consisting of the conductor and a light emitting diode (LED) demonstrated that the conductor can be applied to flexible and stretchable electronic devices.