Heating-Induced Self-Healing of Tin Incorporated Copper Microfiber Network for Recoverable Transparent Conductive Electrodes

Abstract

Commercial indium tin oxide (ITO) has been limited in utility due to its brittleness and high cost. Here, a flexible Sn-Cu hybrid metallic network with a low sheet resistance of 3.71 X sq À1 at 90% transparency was synthesized by a facile solution electro-writing method, exceeding the performance of ITO film. By incorporating Sn nanoparticles into a Cu microfiber network matrix, a heating-induced self-healing recoverable metallic network was obtained. The Sn-Cu microfiber transparent conductive electrode (TCE) endured a sheet resistance increase of $ 2.6% after 1000 bending cycles, and a decrease of $ 2.0% was found after a heating-induced self-healing process was subsequently conducted on the TCE. These results indicate that the proposed Sn nanoparticle incorporated self-healing copper metallic network can be expected to be a potential replacement for conventional ITO film and could be widely used in flexible and recoverable electronics.