Facile preparation of high conductive silver electrodes by dip-coating followed by quick sintering

Abstract

With polyol-synthesized silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) as raw materials, the silver electrodes with high conductivity were fabricated via a dip-coating method followed by sintering process, and the effects of the dip-coating and sintering process on the conductivity and surface roughness of silver electrodes were investigated in detail. The silver film with a thickness of 1.97 µm and a roughness of about 2 nm can be prepared after dip-coating at a pulling rate of 500 µm s −1 for 40 coating times. The non-conductive dip-coated silver films are transformed into conductive silver electrodes after conventional sintering in a muffle oven, infrared sintering and microwave sintering, respectively. Compared with high sintering temperature and long sintering time of conventional sintering and infrared sintering, microwave sintering can achieve quick sintering of silver films to fabricate high conductive silver electrodes. The silver electrodes with a sheet resistance of 0.75 Ω sq −1 and a surface roughness of less than 1 nm can be obtained after microwave sintering at 500 W for 50 s. The adjustable dip-coating method followed by quick microware sintering is an appropriate approach to prepare high conductive AgNPs-based electrodes for organic light-emitting diodes or other devices.

Microwave dielectric heating affects the in‐situ polymerization process of Nylon‐6/Ag‐NPs hybrid polymer nanocomposite

“…These results confirmed that microwave irradiation increased the size of Ag‐NPs by 2 to 10 times compared to their initial size of 20 to 30 nm, due to their fusion/sintering with each other. This fusion/sintering process has been reported in the fabrication of electrodes with Ag‐NPs, where output powers of 250 to 1000 W and irradiation times of 20 to 50 s are applied 53 . However, Ag‐Ny 200 with sizes from 9 to 22 nm were also observed, apparently, they were coated and bonded with Nylon‐6 (Figure 8e,f) but were not fused/sintered.…”

“…This fusion/sintering process has been reported in the fabrication of electrodes with Ag-NPs, where output powers of 250 to 1000 W and irradiation times of 20 to 50 s are applied. 53 However, Ag-Ny 200 with sizes from 9 to 22 nm were also observed, apparently, they were coated and bonded with Nylon-6 (Figure 8e,f) but were not fused/sintered. With these results, it is considered that the predominant process producing agglomeration and precipitation of Ag-Ny 200 is coating.…”

Facile fabrication of large-scale silver nanowire transparent conductive films by screen printing

“…Therefore, metal nanowires are ideal materials to replace indium tin oxide (ITO) [10,11], carbon nanotubes [12], graphene [13,14] and conductive polymers [ [15] to fabricate TCFs. Among metal nanowires, silver nanowires (AgNW) is the most promising candidate owing to excellent conductivity, relatively low cost and convenient fabrication [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24].…”

Fabrication of Silver Mesh/Grid and Its Applications in Electronics

“…As it is known, coating is a method to fabricate a film by spreading the solution on a substrate. The method is compatible for large-volume manufacture and cost-effective. − And the general coating technologies for the fabrication of the Ag networks include bar-coating, spin coating, spray coating, drop casting, Meyer rod coating, etc. ,− After being coated on the substrate, the Ag NPs or Ag NWs form Ag networks by self-assembly quickly. However, the method always gets random networks, which will affect the sheet resistance and the transmittance of the resulting electrodes.…”