Making elastic conductive material with nanoparticles

Ars Technica : Adding conductive nanoparticles to elastic materials usually makes them much more brittle. A group of Korean researchers led by Unyong Jeong from Yonsei University and Jongjin Park from the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology has developed a technique that maintains the original material’s elasticity. The group spun a combination of butadiene and polystyrene into stretchy fibrous mats. They then soaked the mats in a solution of silver ions, which were absorbed into the material. Using a chemical process, they converted the ions into nanoparticles, resulting in a stretchy mat loaded with conductive fibers. A mat 150 µm thick has a conductivity similar to that of thin gold strips used in large-scale devices. When the material is fully stretched, the conductivity drops only 40%. Jeong and Park used the material as an RF antenna, tunable by how much it is stretched, and as electrodes in an LED.