Flexible and Transparent Leaf-vein Electrodes Fabricated by Liquid Film Rupture Self-Assembly AgNWs for Application of Heaters and Pressure Sensors

Abstract

The leaf veins with hierarchically interconnected network structures have great potential as self-assembly templates for transparent and flexible electrodes. In this paper, a liquid membrane ruptured assisted AgNWs self-assembly method was adopted to obtain conductive veins, which show a low sheet resistance of 3.6 /Ω❏ and a high transparency of 80.3%. The figure of merit of conductive veins was as high as 451Ω-1 and can be further increased by increasing the number of soaking because the light transmittance is immune to the AgNWs layer number. The veins maintained excellent electrical conductivity even after bending 10000 times at a 2 mm radius of curvature and exhibited excellent corrosion resistance under harsh conditions. Heaters based on the conductive veins are shown as application examples. A high temperature of 104 oC was achieved at a low voltage of 2 V, enough to heat cold water. Furthermore, pressure sensors based on the conductive veins were fabricated as examples of wearable devices. Human actions such as finger bending, wrist bending, elbow swing, throat swallowing, smile and walking can be monitored in real-time. The liquid film ruptured assisted nanomaterial self-assembly method is an effective strategy for the efficient preparation of conductive mesh, which can be extended to any substrates with mesh structure owing to its simplicity and universality.