High-efficiency transfer of percolating nanowire films for stretchable and transparent photodetectors

Stretchable devices with good transparency offer exciting new applications over the existing technologies, but remarkable difficulties remain in the fabrication of transparent and stretchable devices. In this paper, we report an effective method to fabricate transparent elastic photodetectors which combines the merits of the transparent polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) polymer with its stretchability and the Zn₂SnO₄ nanowire (NW) with its photodetection functionality. Zonyl fluorosurfactant is found to be critical which improves the bonding between the functional NWs and the PDMS matrix, thus enabling the high efficient transfer of NW structures into PDMS. Highly conductive and thin percolating AgNW films were successfully embedded into PDMS mixed with ∼11% Zonyl which are otherwise not achievable with pure PDMS. Transparent and stretchable photodetectors were fabricated with the developed method. The photocurrent was found to be reciprocal to the square of the channel length, Iph∼ 1/l(2). The chemically bonded sensing materials in the PDMS matrix allow more NW exposure to air. This lead to a fast switching operation of the photodetectors with a response time below 0.8 s and a reset time around 3 s, which is significantly improved compared to reported stretchable NW photodetectors fully embedded in the polymer matrix.