Enhancing and Understanding the High Stretchability of Printable, Conductive Silver Nanowire Ink

A printable conductive ink that is both highly conductive and stretchable is desired for flexible and wearable electronics. This can be achieved by using silver nanowires as the conductive filler instead of the typically used silver flakes or nanoparticles. It is shown here that long, thin nanowires, lower metal fills and employing plasma sintering rather than thermal annealing leads to the best stretchability. The optimized silver nanowire ink …