Highly Robust Indium‐Free Transparent Conductive Electrodes Based on Composites of Silver Nanowires and Conductive Metal Oxides

Abstract

A hybrid approach for the realization of In-free transparent conductive layers based on a composite of a mesh of silver nanowires (NWs) and a conductive metal-oxide is demonstrated. As metal-oxide room-temperature-processed sol-gel SnO x or Al:ZnO prepared by low-temperature (100 ° C) atomic layer deposition is used, respectively. In this concept, the metal-oxide is intended to fuse the wires together and also to "glue" them to the substrate. As a result, a low sheet resistance down to 5.2 Ω sq −1 is achieved with a concomitant average transmission of 87%. The adhesion of the NWs to the substrate is signifi cantly improved and the resulting composites withstand adhesion tests without loss in conductivity. Owing to the low processing temperatures, this concept allows highly robust, highly conductive, and transparent coatings even on top of temperature sensitive objects, for example, polymer foils, organic devices. These Indium-and PEDOT:PSS-free hybrid layers are successfully implemented as transparent top-electrodes in effi cient allsolution-processed semitransparent organic solar cells. It is obvious that this approach is not limited to organic solar cells but will generally be applicable in devices which require transparent electrodes.

Silver Nanowire-IZO-Conducting Polymer Hybrids for Flexible and Transparent Conductive Electrodes for Organic Light-Emitting Diodes

“…A value of = 500 is observed for the conventional ITO film and the high-performing nano-structured thin film 37 38 . The results show that our AgNW-IZO-PEDOT:PSS hybrid electrode is comparable to the state-of-the art AgNW transparent electrodes 37 and other AgNW-based hybrid electrodes 33 39 . The reduction in R s (from 20 Ωsq −1 to 5.9 Ωsq −1 ) is more evident than the loss in transmittance (from approximately 88% to 86%) in the hybrid film with changes in IZO thickness, as intended.…”

Fully Transparent and Flexible Capacitors with ZrO2 as the Dielectric Layer

“…The transmittance was slightly lowered for capacitors with AZO as both the top and bottom electrodes. When the AgNWs were incorporated into the electrodes, however, the transmittance dropped significantly due to the randomly distributed AgNWs that caused a pronounced scattering of the incident light under the normal angle . Even though, the transmittance in the visible range remained acceptable, as shown in Figure d in which the characters can be clearly seen from the capacitors with the composite bottom electrodes.…”

Foldable Electrochromics Enabled by Nanopaper Transfer Method

“…A comparison on the optical property between ITO/glass (15 Ω sq −1 ) and our nanopaper electrode is shown in Figure c. For nanopaper electrode, a small hump at around 330 nm is due to the characteristic plasma frequency of Ag . Due to the large aspect ratio of the Ag nanowires, only the transverse resonance peak is observed in the UV–vis region …”