Highly transparent and conductive electrodes enabled by scalable printing-and-sintering of silver nanowires

Abstract

Silver nanowires (Ag NWs) have good promised for flexible and transparent electronics. However, It remains an open question on how to achieve large-scale printing of Ag NWs with high optical transparency, electrical conductivity, and mechanical durability for practical applications, though extensive research has been conducted for more than a decade. In this work, we propose a possible solution that integrates screen printing of Ag NWs with flash-light sintering (FLS). We demonstrate that the use of low-concentration, screen-printable Ag NW ink enables large-area and high-resolution patterning of Ag NWs. A critical advantage comes from the FLS process that allows low-temperature processing, short operational time, and high output rate - characteristics that fit the scalable manufacturing. Importantly, we show that the resultant Ag NW patterns feature low sheet resistance (1.1-9.2 Ohm sq-1), high transparency (75.2-92.6%), and thus a remarkable figure of merit comparable to state of the art. These outstanding properties of Ag NW patterns, together with the scalable fabrication method we propose, would facilitate many Ag NW-based applications, such as transparent heaters, stretchable displays, and wearable devices; here, we demonstrate the novel design of flexible and transparent radio frequency 5G antennas.