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Conventional straight fibers spun from carbon nanotubes have rather limited deformability; creating a spiral structure holds the promise to break this shape restriction and enhance structural flexibility. Here, we report up to one meter-length threads containing purely single-walled nanotubes twisted into spiral loops (about 1.3 × 10(5) loops per meter) with tunable fiber diameters and electrical conductivity. Because of significant increase of the loop number and long-range homogeneity, the fibers display many unique properties (e.g., self-shrinking and forming extremely entangled structure, fast stretching with great resilience, large-degree axial and lateral deflection, and excellent fatigue resistance) that are difficult to achieve in straight yarns or short helical segments. They also have potential applications as macroscopic fiber-shaped temperature sensors and deformable gas sensors. Our long spiral fibers may be configured into versatile structures such as nanotextiles for developing wearable electronics and multifunctional fabrics.

Fibers made from carbon nanotubes or graphene are strong and conductive; encoding helical structures into these fibers may render useful properties such as high stretchability. Here, we directly spin freestanding graphene oxide (GO) films into helical fibers consisting of uniformly arranged loops with tunable diameters, under controlled environmental humidity. Reduced GO fibers with a helical shape are stretched elastically with a reversible electrical resistance change for many strain cycles. Stretchable temperature sensors built on helical fibers work at large strains (up to 50%) and high temperature (up to 300 °C), with a reliable deformation-independent response. The GO fibers also contain through-channels inside with suitable pore size, which can take up an aqueous electrolyte quickly under a low bias, resulting in a fiber-shaped, on-off switchable electrocapillary sucker. Our multifunctional helical and hollow GO fibers have potential applications in stretchable fiber-shaped sensors, actuators and nano-fluid systems.

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