Highly conducting silver nanowire‐polyacrylonitrile hollow fibres for flexible supercapacitors

Abstract

A new approach for making stable, flexible, and conductive hollow fibres of poly (acrylonitrile) using dry-jet-wet spinning technique is investigated, wherein the inner walls of the poly (acrylonitrile) hollow fibres are deposited with silver nanowires using their dispersion in the bore fluid. The bore fluid plays a crucial role in determining the morphology and flexibility of the hollow fibres and entrapment of long silver nanowires on the inner walls. Fibres with AgNW layer having high conductivity of ~104 Scm−1 are obtained with the use of ~2 wt% of silver nanowires. The conducting fibres are successfully assembled into coaxial configuration to yield highly stable, flexible supercapacitors with capacitance value of 128 Fcm−3. The unique morphology of these conductive hollow fibres opens the possibility of making flexible and stable devices for wearable electronics.