Wet‐Spinning Fabrication of Flexible Conductive Composite Fibers from Silver Nanowires and Fibroin.

Biocompatible flexible conductive composite fibers have attracted great research interest because of multitude of their potential applications, such as wearable devices, biomedical sensors, and actuators. Herein, highly conductive and flexible silver nanowire (AgNW)/fibroin composite fibers were fabricated by using a wet‐spinning technique. The composite fiber conductivity was as high as 5670 S/cm at an AgNW concentration of 29.1 wt%. The composite fibers also exhibited high flexibilities and could be folded without losing their conductivities. Furthermore, the composite fiber fabricated with a 3× draw ratio exhibited a breaking strain of 27.3% and breaking stress of 118.1 cN/dtex. Our attempt to produce such biocompatible flexible conductive composite fibers by using sustainable regenerated silk fibroins and compatible AgNWs via wet spinning may provide a practical way for fabricating functional biocompatible fiber materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]