Dewetting-driven self-assembly of web-like silver nanowire networked film for highly transparent conductors

Abstract

Silver nanowire (AgNW) networked films have received much attention as transparent conducting materials owing to their excellent conductivity, high transmittance, and moderate cost. In addition, AgNWs can be easily prepared as dispersions in liquids, enabling solution-based processing. Nevertheless, the fabrication of highly transparent AgNW networked electrodes remains challenging owing to the high percolation threshold of AgNWs. In this study, web-like AgNW networked films were fabricated via the dewetting-driven self-assembly of AgNWs using meniscus-dragging deposition. The dewetting of liquid thin films containing AgNWs was finely tuned by adjusting the ethylene glycol content of an AgNW–isopropyl alcohol dispersion and the surface energy of the coating substrate. The obtained AgNW networked electrodes with self-assembled web-like structures had a significantly lower percolation threshold (0.26 μg cm−2) than randomly networked AgNW electrodes (2.53 μg cm−2), resulting in an outstanding combination of sheet resistance and optical transparency (38 Ω sq−1 at T = 96%). This large scalable one-step coating strategy for metal mesh thin films can advance the development of next-generation transparent conducting electrodes.