Stretchable conductors made of single wall carbon nanotubes self-grafted on polymer films

Aiming at the accomplishment of stretchable and elastic conductive devices, we report in this work electrical, mechanical and thermal characterization of a composite conductive material obtained by self-grafting of single wall carbon nanotubes bundles on different polymeric films. The dependence of resistance of micrometric composite conductors on the applied strain was measured; the current breakdown threshold was also measured together with the corresponding temperature increase. Finally, the dependence of an AC signal attenuation for a bi-layer single wall carbon nanotubes conductor sandwiching a 25 mu m thick poly-ethylene film was obtained as a function of the signal frequency, and the experimental results were satisfactorily compared to a simple RLC model.