A Highly Stretchable and Conductive Superhydrophobic Coating for Flexible Electronics

Xiaojing Su, Hongqiang Li,* Xuejun Lai, Zhonghua Chen, and Xingrong Zeng*

Abstract:  Superhydrophobic materials integrating stretchability with conductivity have huge potential in the emerging application horizons such as wearable electronic sensors, flexible power storage apparatus and corrosion-resistant circuits. Herein, a facile spraying method is reported to fabricate a durable superhydrophobic coating with excellent stretchable and electrical performance by combing 1-octadecanethiol modified silver nanoparticles (M-AgNPs) with polystyrene-b-poly(ethylene-co-butylene)-b-polystyrene (SEBS) on a pre-stretched natural rubber (NR) substrate. The embedding M-AgNPs in elastic SEBS matrix and relaxation of pre-stretched NR substrate construct hierarchical rough architecture and endow the coating with dense charge-transport pathways. The fabricated coating exhibits superhydrophobicity with water contact angle larger than 160o and high conductivity with resistance of about 10 Ω. The coating not only maintains superhydrophobicity at low/high stretch ratio for the newly generated small/large protuberances, but also responds to stretching and bending with good sensitivity, broad sensing range and stable response cycles. Moreover, the coating exhibits excellent durability to heat, strong acid/alkali and mechanical forces including droplet impact, kneading, torsion and repetitive stretching-relaxation. The findings conceivably stand out as a new tool to fabricate multifunctional superhydrophobic materials with excellent stretchability and conductivity for flexible electronics under wet or corrosive environments.

论文链接：http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acsami.8b01382