Polymer nanofibre composite nonwovens with metal-like electrical conductivity

Abstract

Conductive composites: Polymer nanofibre composite rivals metal New method has enabled preparation of polymer-metal composite nonwovens with very low metal loading but metal-like high conductivity. A collaborative team led by Andreas Greiner from University of Bayreuth, Germany demonstrates that by reducing the percolation threshold significantly with a wet-laid method, silver nanowire and polymer composite nonwovens show high electrical conductivity of 750.000S/m at only 3.4 vol% loading of silver. It can be attributed to the homogenous distribution of the silver nanowires in the electrospun polymer fibres. In addition, the high conductivity of the composites is almost fully resistive to bending. These nice features enable the use of the conductive composite nonwovens in various flexible, lightweight and economic applications, such as portable Joule heaters with very low operating voltages of only 1.1 V.