Flexible conducting sheets are projected to be employed in elastic electronic equipment due to their superior conductivity and deformability. In a study published in Scientific Reports, four types of stretchable conducting sheets were created by combining metallic nanoparticles on the surface of carbon nanotubes and distributing them in a polydimethylsiloxane framework.
Study: Modeling and characterization of the electrical conductivity on metal nanoparticles/carbon nanotube/polymer composites. Image Credit: Rost9/Shutterstock.com
Maintaining Flexibility of Carbon Nanotubes
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are frequently employed in electronic equipment, transducers, sensors, and biomaterials due to their exceptional electrical, mechanical, and thermal characteristics. Several stretchable conducting composites based on carbon nanotubes and flexible polymers like polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) have been thoroughly investigated.
The key to producing elastic polymeric composites with high conductivity involves developing a carbon nanotube conduction framework in a virtually insulated polymeric matrix. Upping the CNT concentration of polymeric composites may typically enhance their conductance, but it will ultimately diminish their flexibility.
Increasing the conductance of carbon nanotubes rather than increasing their quantity is a more beneficial technique for maintaining composite flexibility.
Ensuring High Conductivity of Carbon Nanotubes for Good Flexibility
Numerous studies on increasing the conductance of carbon nanotube/polymer nanoscale composites have been published thus far. Adding metallic nanoparticles (NPs) to the polymeric framework is one of the several techniques to increase the conductance of the composite.
Another viable way to increase the conductance of a carbon nanotube system is to coat it with high conductivity alloy or metal particles (like gold and copper). Unfortunately, gold is too costly for scalable usage.
On the other hand, copper is significantly cheaper, but it is tricky to regulate the size of its nanoparticles (
