Abstract
Printed flexible electrodes with conductive inks have attracted much attention in wearable electronics, flexible displays, radio-frequency identification, etc. Conventional conductive inks contain large amount of polymer which would increase the electrical resistivity of as-printed electrodes and require high sintering temperature. Here, composite electrodes without cracks were printed on polyimide substrate using binder-free silver nanoparticle based inks with zero-dimensional (activated carbon), one-dimensional (silver nanowire and carbon nanotube) or two-dimensional (graphene) fillers. The effect of fillers on resistivity and flexibility of printed composite electrodes were evaluated. The graphene filler could reduce the resistivity of electrodes, reaching 1.7 × 10−7 Ω·m after low power laser sintering, while the silver nanowire filler improved their flexibility largely during bending tests. The microstructural changes were examined to understand the nanojoining process and their properties.
Highlights
Printed flexible electrodes have attracted great attention in a variety of newly emerging areas such as printable transistors, flexible displays, electrodes, sensors, antennas, radio-frequency identification tags, solar cells, etc. [1]
The synthesized Ag NPs were coated with a PVP shell, which can effectively prevent the agglomeration of Ag NPs
Ag nanowires were synthesized with polyol method [23]
Summary
Printed flexible electrodes have attracted great attention in a variety of newly emerging areas such as printable transistors, flexible displays, electrodes, sensors, antennas, radio-frequency identification tags, solar cells, etc. [1]. The used binders are typically polymers, such as acrylics [7], alkyds [8], cellulose [9] and rubber resins [10]. These binders can connect conductive filler elements to each other and offer good formability during printing, they bring insufficient electrical conductivity due to their non-conductivity. The presence of such binders complicates the curing and sintering processes because longer time or higher temperature is needed to remove or decompose them [11]. A high temperature is needed to decompose this organic content and promote atomic
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