In
this paper, transparent electrodes with dense Cu@Ag alloy nanowires
embedded in the stretchable substrates are successfully fabricated
by a high-intensity pulsed light (HIPL) technique within one step.
The intense light energy not only induces rapid mutual dissolution
between the Cu core and the Ag shell to form dense Cu@Ag alloy nanowires
but also embeds the newly formed alloy nanowires into the stretchable
substrates. The combination of alloy nanowires and embedded structures
greatly improve the thermal stability of the transparent electrodes
that maintain a high conductivity unchanged in both high temperature
(140 °C) and high humidity (85 °C, 85% RH) for at least
500 h, which is much better than previous reports. The transparent
electrodes also exhibit high electromechanical stability due to the
strong adhesion between alloy nanowires and substrates, which remain
stable after 1000 stretching–relaxation cycles at 30% strain.
Stretchable and transparent heaters based on the alloyed and embedded
electrodes have a wide outputting temperature range (up to 130 °C)
and show excellent thermal stability and stretchability (up to 60%
strain) due to the alloy nanowires and embedded structures. To sum
up, this study proposes the combination of alloying and embedding
structures to greatly improve the stability of Cu nanowire-based stretchable
transparent electrodes, showing a huge application prospect in the
field of stretchable and wearable electronics.
Highly compact and conductive Cu films are successfully fabricated by introducing mechanically robust and highly conductive metal nanowires (NWs) as fillers and optimizing amine‐based ligands in Cu complex inks. The metal NWs (AgNWs and CuNWs) dispersed in the complex inks provide networks of nucleation sites for the in situ formed Cu particles and thereby control the decomposition of Cu complex inks at low temperatures to realize Cu films with high uniformity and integrality. The high affinity between metal NWs and the in situ formed Cu element enables the growth of Cu particles along the metal NWs to create a compact structure. Besides, the amine‐based ligands such as 2‐amino‐2‐methyl‐1‐propanol (AMP), 2‐ethylhexylamine (Ethy), and hexylamine (Hexy) are varied to adjust the size of Cu particles and further improve the microstructure and conductivity of the sintered Cu films. The Cu‐Ethy complex/metal NW inks sintered at 140 °C exhibit the lowest resistivity of 14.9 µΩ cm, which is about one‐third that fabricated from the pure Cu‐AMP complex inks. The flexible light‐emitting diode circuits and V‐shaped dipole antennas prepared from the Cu complex/metal NW inks have excellent performance due to their outstanding conductivity and flexibility, showing great potential in the fabrication of cost‐effective, flexible printed electronic devices.
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