Wet-spinning of highly conductive nanocellulose-silver fibers

Cellulose nanofibrils isolated from natural resources such as wood show strong mechanical properties, high thermal stability, optical transparency, and easy functionalization, which are important for fabricating high-performance electronic devices. Here, we successfully developed a strategy to achieve conductive AgNW-CNF fibers by the wet-spinning of renewable cellulose nanofibrils (CNFs) and silver nanowires (AgNWs) from a single spinneret. The loading of AgNWs has a significant influence on the morphology of CNF-AgNW fibers. Hollow CNF-AgNW fibers formed at AgNW loading ratios of 30-40 wt%. The CNF-AgNW hollow fibers containing 40 wt% AgNWs achieved a high electrical conductivity of 6.8 x 10(5) S m(-1). Because of their high flexibility and good mechanical properties, the CNF-AgNW fibers can be easily woven or integrated with other commercially available fibers to form textile structures. In addition, the fibers worked well as mechanical elastic conductors for the construction of a soft circuit.