Transparent electrodes have been widely used in electronic devices such as solar cells, displays and touch screens. Highly flexible transparent electrodes are especially desired for the development of next generation flexible electronic devices. Although indium tin oxide (ITO) is the most commonly used material for the fabrication of transparent electrodes, its brittleness and growing cost limit its utility for flexible electronic devices. Therefore, the need for new transparent conductive materials with superior mechanical properties is clear and urgent. Ag nanowire (AgNW) has been attracting increasing attention because of its effective combination of electrical and optical properties. However, it still suffers from several drawbacks, including large surface roughness, instability against oxidation and moisture and poor adhesion to substrates. These issues need to be addressed before wide spread use of metallic NW as transparent electrodes can be realized. In this study, we demonstrated the fabrication of a flexible transparent electrode with superior mechanical, electrical and optical properties by embedding a AgNW film into a transparent polymer matrix. This technique can produce electrodes with an ultrasmooth and extremely deformable transparent electrode that have sheet resistance and transmittance comparable to those of an ITO electrode.

A simple and effective oxygen plasma treatment on low-temperature deposited SnO₂ electron transport layer was demonstrated.

To improve the electrical properties of silver nanowire (Ag NW) transparent conductive electrodes (TCEs), the density of Ag NW networks should be increased, to increase the number of percolation paths. However, because of the inverse relationship between optical transmittance and electrical resistivity, the optical properties of Ag NW TCEs deteriorate with increasing density of the Ag NW network. In this study, a hybrid Ag NW electrode composed of randomly oriented and grid-patterned Ag NW networks is demonstrated. The hybrid Ag NW electrodes exhibit significantly improved sheet resistances and slightly decreased transmittances compared to randomly oriented Ag NW networks. Hybrid Ag NW TCEs show excellent mechanical flexibilities and durabilities in bending tests with a 5 mm radius of curvature. Moreover, flexible transparent film heaters (TFHs) based on the hybrid Ag NW electrodes show elevated maximum temperatures relative to TFHs based on randomly oriented Ag NW electrodes, when operated at the same input voltages.