Silver Nanowires Can Self-Heal and Hold Huge Potential for Flexible Electronics

Indium tin oxide is one of the most widely used materials for touchscreens, plasma displays and flexible electronics. But its rising price has forced the electronics industry to search for alternatives. Now, scientists may have discovered one alternative that could have some major potential.

One of the options is a film made with silver nanowires, which are wires that are so extremely thin that they're one-dimensional. These nanowires are then embedded in flexible polymers. Such like indium tin oxide, this material is both transparent and conductive. Unfortunately, development has stalled due to the fact that researchers lack a fundamental understanding of its mechanical properties.

That's why researchers have taken a closer look at these properties. The scientists varied the tension of silver nanowires thinner than 120 nanometers and then monitored their deformation with electron microscopy. This allowed them to characterize the cyclic mechanical behavior of the nanowires.

"Cyclic loading is an important material behavior that must be investigated for realizing the potential applications of using silver nanowires in electronics," said Horacio Espinosa, one of the researchers, in a news release. "Knowledge of such behavior allows designers to understand how these conductive films fail and how to improve their durability."

What was more interesting was that permanent deformation was partially recoverable in the nanowires. This means that some of the material's defects self-healed and disappeared during cyclic loading. This, in particular, indicates that silver nanowires would potentially withstand long cyclic loads for long periods of time, which is key for flexible electronics.

"These silver nanowires show mechanical properties that are quite unexpected," said Espinosa. "We had to develop new experimental techniques to be able to measure this novel material property."

The findings are published in the journal Nano Letters.

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