Self-assembled Ultrathin Gold Nanowires as Highly Transparent, Conductive and Stretchable Supercapacitor

High transparency, conductivity and stretchability are very difficult to achieve simultaneously in a single type of capacitance device. Usually, high optical transparency requires very thin conductive film, which will inevitably cause cracking or breakage when a strain is applied. In this case, most of the currently developed electrodes are either transparent or stretchable but not both. Herein, we report a simple yet efficient method to fabricate self-assembled monolayer gold nanowires (AuNWs) conductive thin film. Such film is both transparent and stretchable due to the unique flexible hairy structure of ultrathin AuNWs (2nm in diameter, aspect ratio >10,000). In addition, the resultant AuNWs film could be used as nanostructured electrode for transparent and stretchable supercapacitors. The entire supercapacitor showed a high transparency of 79% at the wavelength of 550nm, and could be stretched up to 30% strain without degradation over 80 stretching cycles.