Facile and Efficient Patterning Method for Silver Nanowires and Its Application to Stretchable Electroluminescent Displays

• Published in: ACS applied materials & interfaces Vol. 12; no. 21; pp. 24074 - 24085
• Main Authors: Lin, Yong, Yuan, Wei, Ding, Chen, Chen, Shulin, Su, Wenming, Hu, Hailong, Cui, Zheng, Li, Fushan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Chemical Society 27.05.2020
• Subjects: durability; electrodes; filtration; heart rate; nanosilver; nanowires; transmittance; wavelengths; vacuum filtration; stretchable electroluminescent displays; patterned transparent conductive films; screen printing; patterning silver nanowires
• ISSN: 1944-8244; 1944-8252; 1944-8252
• DOI: 10.1021/acsami.9b21755

The patterning of silver nanowires (AgNWs) is subject to critical challenges, which have seriously limited their practical applications. This work describes a simple and efficient method combining screen printing with vacuum filtration for patterning AgNW networks. The screen-printed poly­(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) mask layer was shown to be strongly adhered to the filtration membrane, which resulted in well-defined sharp edges of the deposited AgNW patterns, and a 50 μm patterning resolution was achieved. The patterned films with low densities of AgNWs (≤15 μg/cm2) were transferred to the surface of PDMS to make patterned stretchable transparent conductive films (TCFs). The low sheet resistance of 7.3 Ω/sq was achieved at an optical transmittance of 79.6% (at 550 nm wavelength) with a AgNW deposition density of only 12.5 μg/cm2. As an application example, the patterned TCFs were used as the top electrodes to fabricate stretchable alternating current electroluminescent (ACEL) displays with stretchability up to 70% of their original dimension, which were applied to a smart system for simulating heart beats together with a digitally operated flexible circuit. The ACEL device exhibited a bright and uniform emission with a clear and smooth edge even with a pattern width as narrow as 100 μm, as well as exceptional elasticity and durability in spite of bending, stretching, and twisting. The present work provides a new way of patterning AgNWs and can be extended to a variety of applications.