Stretchable conductors

Mastery of nanotechnology has led researchers to extensively develop materials with consistent electronic properties under flexion. Shear has always presented new difficulties. Now, Korean researchers have developed a polymer-based stretchable nanoarchitechture which they modify to have either conductive or resistive properties. The team has also discovered that the material's exceptional strain properties are a product of local rotations of the polymer -- a winding and unwinding, of sorts, as the polymer is stretched and relaxed. The material is made conductive by the addition of liquid metal into the empty spaces among the polymer network, and exhibits exceptional stretchability even at strains greater than 200 percent.