Electrohydrodynamic Jet Printed 3D Metallic Grid: Toward High‐Performance Transparent Electrodes

Abstract

2D metallic grids that consist of various nanomaterials that are suitable for the replacement of indium tin oxide in transparent electronics (TEs) manufacturing. High‐resolution conductive grids with large open areas are often required while considering high transmittance. However, previous research shows that this kind of TE often cannot have high transmittance and low sheet resistance simultaneously; it hinders the fabrication techniques and materials from practical applications. Herein, direct fabrication of a high‐performance TE through electrohydrodynamic jet 3D printing technique is reported. Micro‐scale 3D metallic grids with an aspect ratio of above‐5 were printed on a polyester film using Ag nanoparticles. The metal grids with high aspect ratios exhibit an average sheet resistance of 3 Ω sq−1 and transparency of 96%. Both optical and electrical performances are significantly enhanced for which the large cross‐section of the metallic grid is contributed. Furthermore, the flexibility of printed TE is also characterized by the bending and recovering test. It is believed that the printed flexible TE, which utilize a high aspect ratio, 3D metallic grids may replace the conventional ITO glass for which both high transmittance and conductivity are achieved with economic efficiency.

Metal‐Based Flexible Transparent Electrodes: Challenges and Recent Advances

“…[157] Unlike most of the lithography-based techniques that waste the majority of metal materials during the lift-off or etching process, the printing techniques are inexpensive because they produce patterns by a drop-on-demand mode. [121,130,131,[158][159][160][161][162][163][164][165][166][167] As a result, a number of recent research works focused on printing metal meshes as FTEs. For example, Ahn et al fabricated metal meshes on flexible substrates by directly writing concentrated silver nanoparticle inks.…”

Optically Transparent and Highly Conductive Electrodes for Acousto-Optical Devices

“…Based on the literature data [ 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 , 71 , 72 , 73 , 74 , 75 , 76 , 77 ], Figure 2 plots of the technological limitations of various approaches to forming grooves in transparent materials or directly forming conductors on the substrate surface. The markers show the values of the width and depth of the groove’s or line’s height, obtained from the literature sources, and the lines show the t...…”

Electrospray: More than just an ionization source

“…Due to the high conductivity, financial availability, and nonoxidizing properties, silver Reprinted with permission from [188]. [206][207][208][209][210] colloids are the most frequently used dispersions; however, many other materials are being experimented with as well, for example, gold [211,212], indium tin oxide (ITO) [213], carbon [214,215], and copper [216,217].…”

“…Another promising approach that improves the profiles of the jet and the printed trace is based on their adjustment using the physicochemical properties of the sprayed mixture [209,213,217]. It should be noted that the quality of the substrate needs to be considered as well because its properties (e.g., porosity, hydrophobicity) significantly affect the profile of the deposit [206,209,210]. Lee et al set the width of the jet to 10 μm, but the deposited trace had an average width of 100 μm [207].…”