Solution-processed silver nanowire (AgNW) has been considered as a promising material for next-generation flexible transparent conductive electrodes. However, despite the advantages of AgNWs, some of their intrinsic drawbacks, such as large surface roughness and poor interconnection between wires, limit their practical application in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). Herein, we report a high-performance AgNW-based hybrid electrode composed of indium-doped zinc oxide (IZO) and poly (3,4-ethylenediowythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) [PEDOT:PSS]. The IZO layer protects the underlying AgNWs from oxidation and corrosion and tightly fuses the wires together and to the substrate. The PEDOT:PSS effectively reduces surface roughness and increases the hybrid films’ transmittance. The fabricated electrodes exhibited a low sheet resistance of 5.9 Ωsq−1 with high transmittance of 86% at 550 nm. The optical, electrical, and mechanical properties of the AgNW-based hybrid films were investigated in detail to determine the structure-property relations, and whether optical or electrical properties could be controlled with variation in each layer’s thickness to satisfy different requirements for different applications. Flexible OLEDs (f-OLEDs) were successfully fabricated on the hybrid electrodes to prove their applicability; their performance was even better than those on commercial indium doped tin oxide (ITO) electrodes.
Most gas barrier films produce cracks that lead to a significant loss of gas barrier integrity when strain is applied. In order to fabricate stretchable gas barrier films with low water permeability and high endurance after stretching, we used polydiallydimethylammonium (PDDA) mixed with graphene oxide (GO) and poly (vinyl alcohol) (PVA) mixed with montmorillonite (MMT). These films were manufactured by layer-by-layer assembly on an Ecoflex/polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrate with pre-strain applied. A total of 30 layers of PDDA (GO)/PVA (MMT) coated on the substrate exhibited a low water vapor transmission rate of 2.5 × 10−2 g/m2 day after 100 cycles of stretching (30% strain). In addition, they exhibited a high light transmittance of 86.54%. Thus, the prepared stretchable gas barrier film has potential applications as a barrier film in transparent and stretchable electronic devices.
A flexible thin gas barrier film formed by layer-by-layer (LBL) assembly has been studied. We propose for the first time that hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) can be used in LBL assembly. When dispersed in water through sonication-assisted hydrolysis, h-BN develops hydroxyl groups that electrostatically couple with the cationic polymer polydiallyldimethylammonium chloride (PDDA). This process produces hydroxyl-functional h-BN/PDDA nanocomposites. The nanocomposites exhibit well exfoliated and highly ordered h-BN nanosheets, which results in an extremely high visual clarity, with an average transmittance of 99% in the visible spectrum. Moreover, well aligned nanocomposites extend gas diffusion path that reduce water vapor transmission rate to 1.3 × 10 g m d. The simple and fast LBL process demonstrated here can be applied in many gas barrier applications.
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