Interconnected Heat-Press-Treated Gold Nanomesh Conductors for Wearable Sensors

We report the reduction in the wire resistance of gold nanomesh electrodes caused by interconnecting mesh electrodes. The porous-structured electrodes show high resistance because of the high junction resistance between electrodes. For the wiring of wearable sensors, the resistance of conductive wiring needs to be minimal. Therefore, it is necessary to reduce the resistance of nanomesh conductors by interconnecting electrodes. We fabricated the interconnected nanomesh conductors in the following steps. We heat pressed electrospun poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) fiber sheets at 180 °C (near the melting point of PVA), and then deposited the gold layer. We attached the nanomesh conductors to a target substrate by dissolving the PVA layer with spraying water. The electrodes were electrically connected to each other, which decreased the wire resistance by 76% and the sheet resistance from 3.18 to 1.27 Ω/sq. Furthermore, the interconnected structures improved stretchability of nanomesh conductors from 25 to 80%. The decreased resistance helps operate wearable devices by maintaining the same electrical properties when the wire length is increased.