An all-inorganic, fully dense, stretchable ceramic magnetic film

There is widespread interest in new materials-based approaches for introducing flexibility to electromagnetic devices, such as displays, human–machine interfaces, smart textiles, and biomedical implants. From fabrication to application, incorporating ceramic components is particularly challenging due to their extreme stiffness. Here, we introduce a new approach for designing flexible ceramic films and demonstrate it by fabricating fully dense, pre-wrinkled magnetic cobalt ferrite films composed of tiled nanoplatelets. The method relies on the colloidal engineering of metalized graphene nanosheets, which are cast and compressed into wrinkled composite films with accurate control of composition and morphology. Removal of the graphene template by thermal oxidation yields free-standing cobalt ferrite films that can be stretched up to 200% and bent to radii of 2.5 mm while maintaining their magnetic properties. Magnetization retention of 73% is documented after 150% linear mechanical stretching over 100 cycles. The significant stretchability and flexibility in this hard magnetic material is achieved at near full metal oxide crystal density without addition of significant void space or a polymeric elastomer matrix.