Developing invisible heaters is critical to thermochromic paper displays for convenient and low power use. Maintaining high transmittance as well as uniform and widely adjustable resistance remains a challenge for quick and efficient heat exchange in paper displays. Here, through optimizing the spraying process parameters and the dynamic spraying path design on paper, highly uniform and continuously varied film sheet resistance is achieved. Through silver nanowire percolation control, the heat-transfer coefficient is manipulated from 20 to 40 W m–2 K–1. By directly printing high-resolution thermochromic patterns on the invisible heater side, fast and efficient heat transfer is achieved under a voltage lower than 9 V and benefits paper displays with a second-level optical response time and a power consumption below 30 mW cm–2. Large chromatic aberration and discoloration speed are demonstrated from quantitative analysis of both static and dynamic reflection spectra. Guidance for designing thermochromic paper displays with fast response is provided.

Silver nanowire films have a wide application prospect in flexible electronics, while it is a noticeable problem that the silver nanowires break due to the shear force under the mass production film cutting or extreme service conditions. In this paper, the shear fracture behaviour of silver nanowire films with different structural parameters was studied under the extreme shear failure tests. The load-displacement curve was obtained from the nano-indentation test, while the hardness H, the elastic modulus E and the plastic properties represented by the ratio of H3/E2 of silver nanowire films with different diameters and thicknesses were calculated. On the other hand, based on the load-displacement curve, the stress-strain curve can be obtained through the finite element method simulation. The plastic properties can also be judged by the lower limit of yield strength from simulated stress-strain curve. Combined with characteristic crack propagation range, the relationship between plasticity and shear fracture was found, which was further disclosed by in-depth microstructure analysis. The results show that the better the plasticity of silver nanowire films, the stronger the resistance to shear fracture.