Exploiting both optical and electrical anisotropy in nanowire electrodes for higher transparency

Abstract

Transparent electrodes such as indium tin oxide and random meshes of silver nanowires (AgNWs) have isotropic in-plane properties. However, we show that imparting some alignment to AgNWs can create anisotropic transparency and electrical conductivity characteristics that may benefit many applications. For example, liquid crystal displays and the touch sensors on top of them often only need to be transparent to one type of polarized light as well as predominantly conductive in only one direction. Herein, AgNWs are slightly preferentially aligned during their deposition by rod coating. Compared to randomly oriented AgNW films, the alignment boosts the transparency to perpendicularly polarized light, as well as achieves a higher transparency for a given sheet resistance in one direction compared to randomly oriented AgNWs films. These factors together increase the transparency of a 16 Ω/sq electrode by 7.3 percentage points. The alignment technique is cheap and scalable, compatible with roll-to-roll processes, and most importantly does not require extra processing steps, as rod coating is already a standard process for AgNW electrode fabrication.

Highly conductive and transparent coatings from flow-aligned silver nanowires with large electrical and optical anisotropy

“…These spectra exhibit features similar to those of spectra reported for AgNWs in solution 43 and aligned AgNW bundles. 30,33 Prior simulation 44 and experimental 11,33,45 work explains the absorption peak at short (long) wavelength as due to the transverse When the two mechanisms are combined, we observe a much higher anisotropy than reported in earlier studies. 10,11,46 Large optical anisotropy has been shown to improve the resolution of signals such as those arise in polarization images or surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), 30 and large anisotropy is desirable in nanowire-based polarizers for polarization light sensors.…”

Electrical Mapping of Silver Nanowire Networks: A Versatile Tool for Imaging Network Homogeneity and Degradation Dynamics during Failure

“…Such a preferential orientation of the nanowires when using deposition methods such as spin-coating, 21 horizontal dipcoating, 22 capillarity printing, 23 Meyer rod coating, 24,25 or grazing incidence spraying 26 was already demonstrated at the nanoscale using nanocharacterization imaging techniques. In cases where the target applications require a high level of electrical homogeneity, such deposition methods should therefore be considered with caution.…”

Fabrication of a Highly Flexible and Affordable Transparent Electrode By Aligned U-Shaped Copper Nanowires Using a New Electrospinning Collector with Convenient Transferability

“…Transmittance at a wavelength of 550 nm and surface resistance of the aligned copper mesh for current experimental samples in two widths of 0.6 and 1 μm and their conformity with simulation results. Also, other works have been added for comparison. − …”