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Highly conductive, printable and stretchable composite films of carbon nanotubes and silver

Nature Nanotechnology volume 5, pages 853–857 (2010)Cite this article

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Abstract

Conductive films that are both stretchable and flexible could have applications in electronic devices1,2, sensors3,4, actuators5 and speakers6. A substantial amount of research has been carried out on conductive polymer composites7, metal electrode-integrated rubber substrates8,9,10 and materials based on carbon nanotubes and graphene1,2,11,12,13. Here we present highly conductive, printable and stretchable hybrid composites composed of micrometre-sized silver flakes and multiwalled carbon nanotubes decorated with self-assembled silver nanoparticles. The nanotubes were used as one-dimensional, flexible and conductive scaffolds to construct effective electrical networks among the silver flakes. The nanocomposites, which included polyvinylidenefluoride copolymer, were created with a hot-rolling technique, and the maximum conductivities of the hybrid silver–nanotube composites were 5,710 S cm−1 at 0% strain and 20 S cm−1 at 140% strain, at which point the film ruptured. Three-dimensional percolation theory reveals that Poisson's ratio for the composite is a key parameter in determining how the conductivity changes upon stretching.

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Figure 1: Schematic of the preparation of a hybrid Ag–MWNT composite film.
Figure 2: Hybrid Ag–MWNT composite films.
Figure 3: Conductivity and stretchability of various hybrid Ag–MWNT films.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Basic Science Research Programme (grant no. 2009-0090017) through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF), the Center for Nanoscale Mechatronics & Manufacturing (grant no. 2009K000160) which is a 21st-Century Frontier Research programme, and the World Class University programme (grant no. R31-2008-000-10029-0) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, Korea.

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Author notes

  1. Kyoung-Yong Chun and Youngseok Oh: These authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mechanical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, 440-746, Korea

    Kyoung-Yong Chun, Young-Jin Kim, Hyouk Ryeol Choi & Seunghyun Baik

  2. SKKU Advanced Institute of Nanotechnology (SAINT), Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, 440-746, Korea

    Youngseok Oh, Jong-Hyun Ahn, Young-Jin Kim & Seunghyun Baik

  3. School of Advanced Materials Science & Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, 440-746, Korea

    Jonghyun Rho & Jong-Hyun Ahn

  4. Department of Energy Science, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, 440-746, Korea

    Seunghyun Baik

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  1. Kyoung-Yong Chun
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Contributions

K-Y.C., Y.O. and S.B. conceived and designed the experiments, which were carried out by K-Y.C., Y.O. and J.R. H.R.C. provided nitrile butadiene rubber. Y-J.K. designed the finite element modelling, and J-H.A. designed the stretching and light-emitting diode experiments. K-Y.C., Y.O. and S.B. wrote the paper. All authors contributed to data analysis and scientific discussion.

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Correspondence to Seunghyun Baik.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Chun, KY., Oh, Y., Rho, J. et al. Highly conductive, printable and stretchable composite films of carbon nanotubes and silver. Nature Nanotech 5, 853–857 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2010.232

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