Fabrication of assembled and welded Ag/W nanowire composite networks as electrodes for body motion monitoring and flexible heaters

Multifunctional flexible sensors as wearable electronic systems have attracted considerable attention for mimicking human skin to sense ambient stimuli. However, sensors need to have high resolution, stability and sensitivity to realize fully biomimetic skin. Here, an assembled and welded Ag/W composite nanowire flexible electrode was prepared for body motion monitoring and flexible heaters. This Ag/W composite nanowire flexible electrode has a high transmittance of 90.1% (at 121 Ω·sq⁻¹ sheet resistance) and a low sheet resistance of 27 Ω·sq⁻¹ (at 60.1% transmittance). Although the transparency of this electrode is not high, the fluctuation in relative resistance change rate at 10% strain is only 5% after 1000 tensile cycles. It can be employed to monitor human body motions, including bending of fingers, arms, wrists, and throat action. Meanwhile, the Ag/W nanowires composite film heater achieves a steady-state temperature of up to 100 °C at a constant voltage of 3.5 V and an instantaneous heating rate of up to 36.5 °C·s⁻¹.