A leaf vein-like hierarchical silver grids transparent electrode towards high-performance flexible electrochromic smart windows

Abstract

As essential components of numerous flexible and wearable optoelectronic devices, the flexible transparent conducting electrodes (TCEs) with sufficient optical transmittance and electric conductivity become more and more important. In this work, we fabricated a large-area flexible TCE based on leaf vein-like hierarchical metal grids (HMG) comprising of mesoscale “trunk” and microscale “branches”. The self-formed branched grids made the conducting paths distributing uniformly while the laser-etching trunk grids enabled to transport the collected electrons across long-distance. The Ag HMG exhibited high optical transmittance (~81%) with low sheet resistance (1.36 Ω sq–1), which could be simply optimized through adjusting the grids’ widths, spaces, and the sizes of the TiO2 colloidal crackle patterns. In addition, on the basis of such advanced HMG electrode, flexible electrochromic devices (ECDs) with remarkable cyclic performance were fabricated. The HMG with high transparency, conductivity, and flexibility provides a promising TCE for the next-generation flexible and wearable optoelectronic devices.