An electrically stable and mechanically robust stretchable fiber conductor prepared by dip-coating silver nanowires on porous elastomer yarn

Abstract

Stretchable fiber conductors are promising for constructing high-performance wearable electronic devices due to their one-dimensional shape, small size, light weight, and excellent integrability. Here, we report the fabrication of a super stretchable fiber conductor by simply dip-coating silver nanowires (AgNWs) on electrospinning-derived porous poly(styrene-block-butadiene-block-styrene) (SBS) yarn. The stretchable fiber conductor is denoted as AgNWs@pSBS. This fiber possesses super stretchability and high electrical conductance. Compared with the fiber using nonporous elastomer fiber as the substrate, the AgNWs@pSBS fiber here possesses remarkably enhanced electrical stability and mechanical robustness. This fiber could be encapsulated by a porous elastomer sheath through in situ electrospinning of SBS microfibers for protection and insulation purpose, while its electrical stability and mechanical robustness could be further enhanced. With super stretchability, high conductivity, electrical stability, and mechanical robustness, the stretchable fiber conductor developed here is promising for transmission of electrical power or signals for wearable electronics. As a proof-of-concept, we demonstrate that, with a stretchable fiber conductor as the electrical circuit, an LED light and a loudspeaker could operate normally without obvious performance degradation irrespective of whether the fiber was relaxed or seriously deformed.