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 (2 nm 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 550 nm, and could be stretched up to 30 % strain without degradation over 80 stretching cycles.