Highly Deformable Nanostructured Elastomeric Electrodes With Improving Conductivity Upon Cyclical Stretching

Abstract

Stretchable and compliant electrodes on polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) are efficiently fabricated by the implantation of neutral metallic clusters aerodynamically accelerated by a supersonic expansion. The production of these nanocomposite electrodes avoids any charging or carbonization of PDMS and the electrodes can withstand many deformation cycles, decreasing their resistance upon cyclical stretching. Micrometric patterns can be simply fabricated by stencil mask patterning.

Neutral-cluster implantation in polymers by computer experiments

“…We chose Aunc having a radius of 3 nm, comparable to the experimental SCBI data (3 −10 nm) 19 . As far as concern the implantation energy, besides 0.5 eV/atom, which is the actual experimental value, we choose also larger implantation energies (1.0 and 2.0 eV/atom) to verify the effect of this parameter on the cluster penetration and PDMS response.…”

“…Recently a novel implantation technique named "Supersonic cluster beam implantation" (SCBI) has been proposed 18,19 . SCBI consists in pointing a collimated beam of neutral metallic clusters towards a polymeric substrate.…”

“…The resulting nanocomposite can withstand many deformation cycles, decreasing their electrical resistance upon cyclical stretching 19 . While the effectiveness of this novel technique has been demonstrated 19 , the physical and chemical phenomena underlying the SCBI process at the microscopic scale remains to be fully understood.…”

“…While the effectiveness of this novel technique has been demonstrated 19 , the physical and chemical phenomena underlying the SCBI process at the microscopic scale remains to be fully understood. As a matter of fact, the implantation process of neutral metal clusters in a polymer matrix is a problem rarely studied in literature 18,19,23 and the mechanical and electrical properties of the resulting nanocomposites need to be fully characterized at the microscopic scale. In particular, it is important to investigate the polymer microstructure evolution in terms of temperature and pressure waves generated upon implantation and the resulting polymer surface damage.…”

“…The SCBI technique has been recently applied using Au-nanoclusters (Au-nc) implanted on a PDMS substrate 19 . The resulting nanocomposite can withstand many deformation cycles, decreasing their electrical resistance upon cyclical stretching 19 .…”