Extremely Simple and Rapid Fabrication of Flexible Transparent Electrodes Using Ultralong Copper Nanowires

Abstract

Recently, flexible transparent electrodes have been fabricated successfully by using silver and copper nanowires. Silver is expensive and scarce, while copper is inexpensive but it requires a complex post-treatment process to obtain copper nanowire electrodes with an equivalent performance. In this study, by using polyvinylpyrrolidone-based ink and ultralong copper nanowires, a simple and low-cost approach has been presented for the fabrication of excellent copper nanowire-based flexible transparent electrodes. When ultrahigh aspect ratio copper nanowires and 0.5 wt % polyvinylpyrrolidone-based ink are applied to coat onto a substrate, the post-treatment process can be simplified to dipping once in acetic acid for 60 s. When compared to previously reported studies, our copper nanowire electrodes proved to be one of the best quality transparent electrodes. Moreover, these electrodes were applied successfully in the fabrication of self-capacitance button touch sensors.