Highly transparent and writable wood all-cellulose hybrid nanostructured paper

Abstract

Paper, as an inexpensive substrate for flexible electronics and energy devices, has garnered great attention because of its abundance, biodegradability, renewability and sustainability. However, the intrinsic opacity and higher roughness of regular paper greatly restricts further applications. One promising method is to use cellulose nanofibers (CNs) to fabricate nanopaper with a high optical transmittance and excellent smoothness, but there are still some challenges facing nanopaper substrates, such as high-energy consumption to extract nanofibers and the time-consuming process to prepare nanopaper. We design a bilayer hybrid paper using unbeaten wood fibers and CNs with a papermaking technique, which achieves a high optical transmittance and superior smoothness while remaining less expensive than nanopaper and useful as a writable surface. The first transparent paper touchscreen with an excellent anti-glare effect in bright environments is demonstrated using our novel transparent and conductive hybrid paper as the flexible electrode.