Ultra-thin and smooth transparent electrode for flexible and leakage-free organic light-emitting diodes.

A smooth, ultra-flexible, and transparent electrode was developed from silver nanowires (AgNWs) embedded in a colorless polyimide (cPI) by utilizing an inverted film-processing method. The resulting AgNW-cPI composite electrode had a transparency of >80%, a low sheet resistance of 8 Ω/□, and ultra-smooth surfaces comparable to glass. Leveraging the robust mechanical properties and flexibility of cPI, the thickness of the composite film was reduced to less than 10 µm, which is conducive to extreme flexibility. This film exhibited mechanical durability, for both outward and inward bending tests, up to a bending radius of 30 µm, while maintaining its electrical performance under cyclic bending (bending radius: 500 µm) for 100,000 iterations. Phosphorescent, blue organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) were fabricated using these composites as bottom electrodes (anodes). Hole-injection was poor, because AgNWs were largely buried beneath the composite's surface. Thus, we used a simple plasma treatment to remove the thin cPI layer overlaying the nanowires without introducing other conductive materials. As a result, we were able to finely control the flexible OLEDs' electroluminescent properties using the enlarged conductive pathways. The fabricated flexible devices showed only slight performance reductions of <3% even after repeated foldings with a 30 µm bending radius.

Effect of Ag nanowire addition into nanoparticle paste on the conductivity of Ag patterns printed by gravure offset method.

This paper focuses on the effect of Ag nanowire addition into a commercial Ag nanopaste and the printability evaluation of the mixed paste by the gravure offset printing methodology. Ag nanowires were synthesized by a modified polyol method, and a small amount of them was added into a commercial metallic paste based on Ag nanoparticles of 50 nm in diameter. Two annealing temperatures were selected for comparison, and electrical conductivity was measured by four point probe method. As a result, the hybrid mixture could be printed by the gravure offset method for patterning fine lines up to 15 µm width with sharp edges and scarce spreading. The addition of the Ag nanowires was significantly efficient for enhancement of electrical conductivity of the printed lines annealed at a low temperature (150 degrees C), while the effect was somewhat diluted in case of high temperature annealing (200 degrees C). The experimental results were discussed with the conduction mechanism in the printed conductive circuits with a schematic description of the electron flows in the printed lines.