Highly Durable Nanofiber-Reinforced Elastic Conductors for Skin-Tight Electronic Textiles

Soft and stretchable electrodes are essential components for skin-tight wearable devices, which can provide comfortable, unobtrusive, and accurate physiological monitoring and physical sensing for applications such as healthcare, medical treatment and human-machine interfaces. Metal-elastomer nanocomposites are a promising approach, enabling high conductivity and stretchability derived from metallic conduction and percolation networks of metal nano/micro fillers. However, their practical application is still limited by their inferior cyclic stability and long-term durability. Here, we report on a highly durable nanofiber-reinforced metal-elastomer composite consisting of i) metal fillers, ii) an elastomeric binder matrix, and iii) electrospun polyvinylidene fluoride nanofibers for enhancing both cyclic stability and conductivity. Embedded polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) nanofibers enhance the toughness and suppress the crack growth by providing a fiber reinforcing effect. Furthermore, the conductivity of n...