Metal nanowires grown on polymeric fibres for electronic textiles.

A key aspect of the use of conventional fabrics as smart textiles and wearable electronics is to incorporate a means of electrical conductivity into single polymer fibres. We present the transformation of thin polymer fibres and fabrics into conductive materials by growth of a thin, optically transparent gold-silver nanowire (NW) mesh with a relatively low metal loading directly on the surface of polymer fibres. Demonstrating the method on poly(lactic--glycolic) acid and nylon microfibres, we show that the NW network morphology depends on the diameter of the polymer fibres, where at small diameters (1-2 μm), the NWs form a randomly oriented network, but for diameters above several micrometers, the NWs wrap around the fibres transversally.