Inkjet printers can produce thin films of carbon nanotubes for use as electrodes in stretchy electronic circuits.

Yongtaek Hong and his colleagues at Seoul National University printed layers of single-walled carbon nanotubes onto a stretchable silicon-based material. The authors found that the electrical properties of the films improved after washing them with water and soaking them in diluted nitric acid. Furthermore, a film with five layers of nanotubes performed better than a single layer, maintaining conductive properties under 100% tensile strain.

This method is simpler and more scalable than previous ones, the authors say.

Appl. Phys. Lett. 104, 113103 (2014)