Issue 16, 2022

Flexible and transparent electrodes imprinted from metal nanostructures: morphology and opto-electronic performance

Abstract

We directed the self-assembly of nanoscale colloids via direct nanoimprint lithography to create flexible transparent electrodes (FTEs) with metal line widths below 3 μm in a roll-to-roll-compatible process. Gold nanowires and nanospheres with oleylamine shells were imprinted with soft silicone stamps, arranged into grids of parallel lines, and converted into metal lines in a plasma process. We studied the hierarchical structure and opto-electronic performance of the resulting grids as a function of particle geometry and concentration. The performance in terms of optical transmittance was dominated by the line width. Analysis of cross-sections indicated that plasma sintering only partially removed the insulating ligands and formed lines with thin conductive shells and a non-conductive core. We provide evidence that the self-assembly of high-aspect nanowires can compensate for defects of the stamp and substrate irregularities during imprinting, while spheres cannot. The wire-based electrodes thus outperformed the sphere-based electrodes at ratios of optical transmittance to sheet resistance of up to ≈ 0.9% Ωsq−1, while spheres only reached ≈ 0.55% Ωsq−1.

Graphical abstract: Flexible and transparent electrodes imprinted from metal nanostructures: morphology and opto-electronic performance

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
27 apr 2022
Accepted
02 iyl 2022
First published
05 iyl 2022
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Nanoscale Adv., 2022,4, 3370-3380

Flexible and transparent electrodes imprinted from metal nanostructures: morphology and opto-electronic performance

L. F. Engel, L. González-García and T. Kraus, Nanoscale Adv., 2022, 4, 3370 DOI: 10.1039/D2NA00259K

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements