Interdependence of Resistance and Optical Transmission in Conductive Nanowire Networks

Abstract

Metallic nanowire networks show great potential for use in transparent conductive displays. The coupled relationship between the principal materials properties of interest for such applications, optical transmittance and sheet resistance, is known to be affected by both nanowire dimensions and area coverage. Existing theory to describe the observed interdependence requires consideration of both bulk and surface phases. Here, an analysis of structural variables in these materials is presented confirming that bulk considerations do not typically apply. Accordingly, a model using statistical theory for random line networks is developed that requires consideration of a surface phase only. The resultant simple expression relates sheet resistance and optical transmission of heterogeneous nanowire assemblies in terms of nanowire dimensions. Comparison of our model with experimental and simulation data from the literature shows excellent agreement. In closing, theoretical insights into the observed influence on sheet resistance of polydisperse nanowire lengths and structural variability are provided.

The Electro-Optical Performance of Silver Nanowire Networks

“…S3, a dependence that is experimentally observed and has been theoretically derived by Ainsworth et al . 39 .

Figure 4( a–d ) Calculated sheet resistance ( R s ) for four aspect ratios (ARs) using the multi-nodal representation (MNR) and Mie light scattering theory (MLST) models for junction resistance ( R jxn ) values of 11, 100 and 1000 Ω. Panels ( c,d ) have less points due to machine memory limitations.

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“…It is well known that increasing the NW length to diameter aspect ratio (AR) of the NWs results in lower R s values and a larger T 35,36 . Thus far, electro-optical models of Ag NWNs have used empirical expressions to describe how T depends on R s (which itself depends explicitly on material resistivity ( ρ ), R in , R jxn and AR); approaches that typically require fitting parameters 35,37,38 , or using other empirically sourced quantities to achieve agreement between experimental and simulated data 13,20,39,40 . The T - R s curve has a characteristic shape, which was highlighted by Mutiso et al .…”

Transparent electrodes with nanorings: A computational point of view

“…Numerous works have been devoted to the electrical and optical properties of transparent films with elongated fillers such as NTs, NWs, and nanorods. [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] However, the use of films containing conducting nanorings [15][16][17] looks extremely attractive since, in this case, there are no dead ends in the percolation cluster, i.e., the percolation cluster is identical to its geometrical backbone. In a two-dimensional continuum percolation, the number density is defined as where N is the number of objects randomly deposited onto a square substrate of size L×L with periodic boundary conditions (PBC).…”

Nanowire Waveguides and Lasers: Advances and Opportunities in Photonic Circuits

“…Although significant progress on the fabrication technologies has been made for achieving nanostructures at a nanometer scale (Zhang et al, 2012 ; Cheon et al, 2017 ; Cho et al, 2019 ; Gao et al, 2020 ), nanowires synthesized with bottom-up growth still show natural advantages such as being defect-free and single-crystalline (Dasgupta et al, 2014 ). The unique geometric and material properties of nanowires are therefore quite attractive for achieving integrated light sources and many other applications such as data transmission (Ainsworth et al, 2018 ), sensing (Ambhorkar et al, 2018 ), and imaging (Park and Crozier, 2013 ).…”