Vapor dealloying of ultra-thin films: a promising concept for the fabrication of highly flexible transparent conductive metal nanomesh electrodes
2019
The booming market of
flexible electronicdisplays has urged the development of highly flexible transparent conductive electrodes (FTCE)1–3 with the ability to replace indium tin oxide (ITO) thin films routinely used as transparent conductive electrodes in photoelectronic devices. The high cost of indium and the poor mechanical stability of ITO under deformation are the main driving forces behind the development of this research area.4 The use of metal
nanomeshesas FTCE is a promising concept with a real potential to substitute ITO in photoelectronic devices.5,6 However, the development of a low-cost fabrication approach allowing producing metal
nanomeshelectrodes with competitive prices and a high performance remains a real bottleneck for the photoelectronic industry. In this paper, we report on a robust approach very easy to implement allowing producing highly flexible metal
nanomeshelectrodes with high performance at a very low cost. This approach lies on a concept consisting in applying dealloying process to ultra-thin Au-Cu alloy thin films using acidic vapors instead of a liquid phase as routinely done in the literature. Using an appropriate procedure, the
nanomeshescan be transferred to any planar or curved support where they can serve as a FTCE. As a proof of concept, we demonstrate that using this approach, one can easily fabricate gold
nanomeshelectrodes transferred onto polyethylene terephthalate (PET) film surface with 79% of transmittance and a sheet resistance as low as 44 Ω □−1 while maintaining exceptional stability under severe mechanical deformations.
Keywords:
-
Correction
-
Source
-
Cite
-
Save
38
References
8
Citations
NaN
KQI