A Highly Stretchable and Fatigue-Free Transparent Electrode Based on an In-Plane Buckled Au Nanotrough Network

Flexible transparent electrodes are an indispensable component of next-generation soft optoelectronics such as wearable electronics and electronic artificial skins (E-skins). Among the existing candidate materials, metal nanotrough networks exhibit optimal overall optoelectronic performance with impressive bendability. However, their further practical applications are hindered by their limited mechanical stretchability, which is highly desired in biointegrated systems. Here it is demonstrated that superior mechanical stretchability with tensile strains up to 300% can be achieved in Au nanotrough networks by introducing an in-plane sinusoidal wavy structure. For the first time it is shown that with a precisely tuned nanotrough geometry along with an optimized network configuration, the buckled Au nanotrough network can be repeatedly stretched to strains up to 120% for 100 000 cycles, exhibiting excellent fatigue performance. Such highly stretchable and fatigue-free (at a high tensile strain up to 100%) Au nanotrough networks present a competent sheet resistance (R-sh approximate to 10 Omega sq(-1)) with high optical transparency (T = 91%), which are demonstrated to be highly compatible with human skins as conformal flexible transparent electrodes.