Printable elastic conductors by in situ formation of silver nanoparticles from silver flakes
- Naoji Matsuhisa,1,
- Daishi Inoue,2,
- Peter Zalar,1, 3, n1
- Hanbit Jin,1,
- Yorishige Matsuba,1, 3,
- Akira Itoh,1, 3,
- Tomoyuki Yokota,1, 3,
- Daisuke Hashizume2,
- & Takao Someya1, 2, 3, 4,
- Affiliations
- Contributions
- Corresponding author
- Journal name:
- Nature Materials
- Year published:
- DOI:
- doi:10.1038/nmat4904
- Received
- Accepted
- Published online
Abstract
Printable elastic conductors promise large-area stretchable sensor/actuator networks for healthcare, wearables and robotics. Elastomers with metal nanoparticles are one of the best approaches to achieve high performance, but large-area utilization is limited by difficulties in their processability. Here we report a printable elastic conductor containing Ag nanoparticles that are formed in situ, solely by mixing micrometre-sized Ag flakes, fluorine rubbers, and surfactant. Our printable elastic composites exhibit conductivity higher than 4,000 S cm−1 (highest value: 6,168 S cm−1) at 0% strain, and 935 S cm−1 when stretched up to 400%. Ag nanoparticle formation is influenced by the surfactant, heating processes, and elastomer molecular weight, resulting in a drastic improvement of conductivity. Fully printed sensor networks for stretchable robots are demonstrated, sensing pressure and temperature accurately, even when stretched over 250%.