Degradable, ultra-flexible, transparent and conductive film made of assembling CuNWs on chitosan

The rapid development of wearable and disposable electronic devices and the rising awareness of environmental sustainability impose growing new demands on the nature degradability of current electronic systems. It is a challenge to fabricate degradable, ultra-flexible, transparent and conductive films (TCFs), which are essential component of wearable devices. Here, a new type of degradable, ultra-flexible TCFs made from green and earth abundant materials are reported. The TCFs are achieved by embedding copper nanowires (CuNWs) into chitosan strategy via simple sol-gel transition. The prepared TCFs exhibit favorable optical and electrical properties (83.7% at the sheet resistance of 14.1 0/sq.). Calculation of figure of merit displays a high value of 143.7, which is superior to that obtained from the flexible ITO, carbon nanotubes, graphene, and other CuNWs based TCFs. In particular, excellent insensitivity conductivity are achieved with a bending radius of 0.1 mm and the sheet resistance remains nearly to be constant after 1000 bending cycles with a bending radius of 1.0 mm. Moreover, the TCFs show good stability to resist tape test and ultrasonication, and which can be completely dissolved in city running water contains 2% acetic acid after ten days under the natural condition, demonstrating an excellent nature degradability. Finally, the successful implementations of the degradable flexible transparent heater and electroluminescent device demonstrate the practical application value of the TCFs.