Highly stable silver nanowire networks with tin oxide shells for freestanding transparent conductive nanomembranes through all‐solution processes

Abstract

Freestanding nanomembranes (NMs) with nanoscale thickness, are mechanically flexible, which are novel building blocks with potential applications in future wearable conformal electronics. Here, we demonstrate a highly stable, ultrathin, freestanding, transparent, and conductive hybrid NM, consisting of a silver nanowire network with tin oxide shell embedded in a colorless polyimide (cPI). The entire fabrication processes are all solution based and non-vacuum, which are simple, scalable and low-cost, enabling facile large-area integration with wearable electronic devices. Our hybrid NMs possess high optical transmittance of 86.7% with low sheet resistance of 9.6 Ω/sq. and can be conformal attached to human skin. In addition, our hybrid NMs exhibit excellent stability to resist moisture, long-term storage, solvent damage, strong oxidant, ultrasonication and acid/base should stem. Particularly, the hybrid NMs are robust and able to withstand high temperature of 300 ℃, without deterioration of performance. As a conformal/skin-attachable device application, a skin-attachable capacitive NM sensor is presented, which provides excellent pressure sensing capabilities.