Highly conductive and flexible transparent films based on silver nanowire/chitosan composite

Abstract

The bio-derived polymer, chitosan, has been incorporated in a silver nanowire (AgNW) network to form the composite film which could solve the critical drawbacks of AgNW films including rough surface, poor adhesion and low oxidation resistance which limit their potential applications. This work uses a very simple and low-temperature fabrication route that is especially suitable for flexible and stretchable invisible electronics. The composite film achieved in this work has good adhesion, great flexibility, excellent oxidation resistance and a smooth surface with RMS roughness around 6.3 nm. The great adhesion and flexibility is attributed largely to the interaction between chitosan and AgNWs. Excitingly, such a film shows a very low sheet resistance of 6.8 Ω sq.⁻¹ at 82.26% optical transmittance, and a high figure of merit (FoM) of 20.9 × 10⁻³ is achieved. The success in highly flexible and highly conductive transparent AgNWs and chitosan integrated films demonstrate that high-performance AgNW based transparent conducting films can be environmentally friendly in processing and composition.