Improvement of Electrical Properties of Silver Nanowires Transparent Conductive by Metal Oxide Nanoparticles Modification

Abstract

At present, silver nanowire transparent conductive films (AgNWs-TCFs) still have problems such as high resistance of AgNWs network nodes, uneven distribution of resistance and poor electrical performance stability, which restrict their commercial application. Different from chemical modification, in this paper, a method of modifying AgNWs-TCFs with metal oxide nanoparticles (MONPs) is proposed, that is, ZnO, SnO2, Al2O3 and TiO2 etc., four transparent metal oxides are used as targets respectively in a magnetron sputtering process, modifying the silver nanowire network wire–wire junctions and silver nanowire in AgNWs-TCFs using active MONPs generated by magnetron sputtering. A series of AgNWs@MONPs for the AgNWs@ZnO-TCFs, AgNWs@SnO2-TCFs, AgNWs@Al2O3-TCFs and AgNWs@TiO2-TCFs were obtained. A significant decrease in the resistance of AgNWs-TCFs through the modification of MONPs was shown. Respectively, the reduction of resistance was 75.6%, 70.4%, 53.2% and 59.8% for AgNWs@ZnO-TCFs, AgNWs@SnO2-TCFs, AgNWs@Al2O3-TCFs and AgNWs@TiO2-TCFs. Correspondingly, its non-uniformity of resistance distribution was 12.5% (18.2% before), 10.0% (17.1% before), 10.1% (24.3% before) and 10.6% (13.4% before), respectively, which markedly improved the uniformity of electrical property. Respectively, their failure voltages reach 16, 16, 15 and 16 (V), so accordingly, the electrical stability is considerably enhanced. In addition, the uniformity of temperature distribution was also significantly optimized with its temperature non-uniformity of 10.4%, 8.7%, 10.3% and 9.6%, respectively. Contrast that with AgNWs@MONPs, and the failure voltages and temperature non-uniformity of AgNWs-TCFs are 12 V and 40.6%.

Silver Nanowire Networks Coated with a Few Nanometer Thick Aluminum Nitride Films for Ultra-Transparent and Robust Heating Applications

“…Over the past decade, research of emerging transparent conductive materials (TCMs) has grown exponentially, thanks to their remarkable properties and the exciting opportunities they can provide to a large variety of devices, i.e., touch screens, smart windows, organic photovoltaics, energy harvesters, transparent heaters (THs), or biomedical sensors. − In the race to replace indium tin oxide (ITO), which is limited by film brittleness and scarcity of indium, metallic nanowire networks and grids, graphene-based thin films, conductive polymers, and several composite materials have demonstrated excellent electrical, optical, and mechanical properties. ,− Among them, AgNW networks are one of the most promising alternatives since they can be fabricated in open air and using large-scale deposition processes, and they have superior flexibility compared to ceramic transparent conductive oxides (TCOs). − However, there are crucial stability issues (chemical, thermal, and electrical) that have hindered their mass integration in devices. − A common strategy to improve the stability of AgNW networks has been to their encapsulation with a protective layer (typically metal oxides, graphene oxide, or polymer-based thin films) to prevent chemical reactions with the environment and silver atomic diffusion. ,− Despite the very promising results achieved so far thanks to such protective layers, there is still much room to improve the voltage and/or temperature of failure and to overcome limitations regarding the loss of optical transparency and long-term stability. ,,, …”

Investigation of Silver Nanowire Transparent Heated Films Possessing the Application Scenarios for Electrothermal Ceramics

“…The THF include the transparent conductive oxides (TCOs) [1][2][3][4][5][6][7], the carbon-based nanomaterials (carbon nanotubes and graphene), metal nano wires (MNWs) network [8][9][10][11][12][13][14], and conductive polymer materials [15]. Among them, one-dimensional silver nanostructural material has received widespread attention due to its excellent photoelectricity, thermal performance, and mechanical properties [10][11][12][13][14]. The silver nanowires (Ag-NWs) not only have many beneficial features of one-dimensional materials, but also inherit the high conductance (6.39 S/m) and excellent thermal conductivity of silver (429 W/(M•K)) [10].…”