Facile Fabrication of Ultra-Stretchable Metallic Nanocluster Films for Wearable Electronics

With recent progress in flexible electronics, developing facile one-step techniques for fabricating stretchable conductors and interconnects remain essential. It is also desirable for these processes to have a small number of processing steps, incorporate micropatterning, and be capable of being effortlessly implemented for manufacturing of wearable logic circuits. A low vacuum flash evaporation of Au nanoclusters is proposed as a facile method to fabricate highly stretchable conductors capable of fulfilling all such requirements. High metal-elastomer adhesion on textured substrates ensures low surface resistances (100% strain ≈ 25 Ω-sq–1) where thin film Au accommodate strain like a “bellow”. Stretchability for conductors deposited on non-prestretched textured substrates up to 150% and smooth PDMS substrates up to 200% are shown. The system is modeled on a microscopic system calculating 2-D current continuity equations. Devising low cost techniques for fabricating stretchable conductors remains essential and in that direction stretchable circuits, heating elements have been demonstrated.