Enhancement of Characteristics of Transparent Conductive Electrode on Flexible Substrate by Combination of...

This study investigates solution-processed transparent conductors with hybrid structure consisting of silver nanowires (AgNWs) and indium-tin-oxide nanoparticles (ITO-NPs) layers fabricated on polymeric flexible polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate. The transparent conductors had stacked structures of AgNWs/ITO-NPs on 125-μm-thick PET and ITO-NPs/AgNWs/ITO-NPs on 125-μm-thick PET, 188-μm-thick PET, or 700-μm-thick glass substrate, respectively. Successful integrations were possible on the substrates without any deformation or distortion. Sheet resistance of the triple-layered transparent conductor samples exhibits low values ranging from 22.41 Ω/square to 22.99 Ω/squarer. Also, their optical transmittance exhibits high values ranging from 83.78 to 87.29% at 550 nm. The triple-layered transparent conductor showed a good thermal stability in terms of sheet resistance and optical transmittance against the high-temperature environment up to 250 °C. All the double and triple-layered transparent conductors fabricated on PET and glass substrates are so stable against the accelerated thermal aging from 110 °C to 130 °C, that ΔR/R0 and ΔT(550)/T0(550) values exhibit less than 0.068 and 0.049, respectively. Furthermore, the layers are so flexible that ΔR/R0 of the layers on PET substrates is lower than 0.1 even at 4.0-mm bending. Especially, triple-layered transparent conductor on 125-μm-thick PET substrates exhibits ΔR/R0 value of 0.042 even at 4.0 mm bending. Thus, it can be concluded that the hybrid structures have the advantage of both thermal stability and flexibility for electrical and optical properties of transparent conductive electrode; which makes them highly applicable in flexible electronics.