Abstract
Solution-processed silver nanowire (AgNW) has been considered as a promising material for next-generation flexible transparent conductive electrodes. However, despite the advantages of AgNWs, some of their intrinsic drawbacks, such as large surface roughness and poor interconnection between wires, limit their practical application in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). Herein, we report a high-performance AgNW-based hybrid electrode composed of indium-doped zinc oxide (IZO) and poly (3,4-ethylenediowythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) [PEDOT:PSS]. The IZO layer protects the underlying AgNWs from oxidation and corrosion and tightly fuses the wires together and to the substrate. The PEDOT:PSS effectively reduces surface roughness and increases the hybrid films’ transmittance. The fabricated electrodes exhibited a low sheet resistance of 5.9 Ωsq−1 with high transmittance of 86% at 550 nm. The optical, electrical, and mechanical properties of the AgNW-based hybrid films were investigated in detail to determine the structure-property relations, and whether optical or electrical properties could be controlled with variation in each layer’s thickness to satisfy different requirements for different applications. Flexible OLEDs (f-OLEDs) were successfully fabricated on the hybrid electrodes to prove their applicability; their performance was even better than those on commercial indium doped tin oxide (ITO) electrodes.
Highlights
Several intrinsic drawbacks of AgNWs must be overcome to utilise them as electrodes for optoelectronic devices
The resulting three kinds of conductive films were investigated for quantitative analysis on the role of each of the materials, which were AgNW, AgNW-indium zinc oxide (IZO), and AgNW-IZO-PEDOT:PSS
After deposition of the IZO layer, the entire AgNW network seems to be encapsulated in IZO
Summary
This result implies that with precise control of the layer thickness, more-conductive hybrid electrodes are possible with minimised loss in T at certain visible wavelengths, and this will be beneficial for the fabrication of OLED luminaire devices. The IZO and PEDOT:PSS worked as a glue to weld the wire junctions and adhere the AgNWs to the substrate, which prevented the AgNWs from possible separation from bending with significantly enhanced bending stability compared to commercial ITO, and they exhibited excellent recovery of sheet resistance after physical stresses originating from their morphologies. The successful fabrication of f-OLEDs on the hybrid electrodes showed 32% EQE enhancements at 50 mA/cm[2] compared to that of the ITO reference, which verified that the demonstrated electrodes in this work could be applied to OLED luminaires and offer high applicability for various flexible devices by replacing ITO
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