Transparent stretchable composite conductor based on silver nanowires with hybrid structure

Transparent stretchable conductors as the core parts of the next-generation devices have attracted a great deal of attentions and achieved progress in a variety of practical applications. However, the current challenge is still to fabricate highly transparent stretchable conductors which can maintain stable resistance even under severe deformation. Here, we propose for the first time a facile, low-cost and scalable method for fabricating silver nanowires (AgNWs)–polyurethane acrylate (PUA)–polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)–silver nanowires (AgNWs) composite films with PVA and AgNWs coated on AgNWs–PUA films. The films were stretched and released after spraying water. After the sprayed water dried, we could observe the resistance could only increase by 21 % under tensile strain up to 20 %. In addition, the composite remains perfectly stable after 500 bending cycles. Our strategy is also suitable for the fabrication of other functional composites with high stretchability.