Controllable fabrication of a flexible transparent metallic grid conductor based on the coffee ring effect

Abstract

An effective and facile strategy was developed to fabricate a flexible transparent metallic grid conductor based on the coffee ring effect with an inkjet printing technique. In this system, silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) were ink-jet printed to directly assemble into twin lines on flexible poly(ethyleneterephthalate) substrates and subsequently sintered at room temperature. Taking advantage of this approach, a highly flexible and transparent AgNPs grid-based conductor was successfully fabricated with a line width of 5–6 μm. The transmittance reached 93.6%, and the sheet resistance was less than 30 Ω sq⁻¹. This simple, cost-effective and non-lithographic approach improves the current fabrication approaches for the creation of patterned microstructures and has great potential to be tailored for the fabrication of optoelectronic devices.