Metallized Electrospun Nanofiber webs with Bulckled Configuration for Highly Transparent and Stretchable Conductors

Transparent and stretchable conductors are expected to be an essential component in future stretchable optoelectronic devices. Until now, two main methods have been commonly employed to fabricate transparent and stretchable conductors by using metal nanomaterials: creating buckling configurations and creating network configurations. In this report, a novel strategy for obtaining transparent and stretchable conductors is presented, one that employs these two main approaches simultaneously. To the best of our knowledge, this proposed configuration of a buckled long nanofiber network in this study has not yet been reported. In order to provide the transparent conductors with dual mode stretchability originating from simultaneous buckled and network configurations, a buckled Au@polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) nanofiber network (hereafter referred to BANN for convenience) was fabricated by transferring Au-metallized electrospun PVP nanofibers onto a prestrained polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrate. Our BANN shows considerably lower strain sensitivity of resistance than that of straight Au@PVP nanofiber network. Durability tests conducted by performing cyclic tensile strain reveal that the relative change in resistance of BANN (prestrain = 20%) is quite small after 1000 cycles. We also demonstrate that this BANN exhibits superior performance over widely used indium tin oxide conductors with regard to high optical transmittance and low sheet resistance.