Highly flexible touch screen panel fabricated with silver-inserted transparent ITO triple-layer structures

Abstract

A flexible and transparent amorphous-indium tin oxide/silver/crystalline-indium tin oxide (a-ITO/Ag/c-ITO) triple-layer structure was prepared as an electrode for capacitive-type touch screen panels (TSPs). A very thin metal film of silver (Ag) was inserted between two ITO layers, and the triple-layer structures were deposited on a colorless polyimide (CPI) substrate by a sputtering method. It was found that the tunable electrical and optical properties of the a-ITO/Ag/c-ITO triple-layer structures were critically affected by the thickness of the inserted Ag layer. The optimized flexible a-ITO/Ag/c-ITO triple-layer structure has low sheet resistance, high optical transmittance, and low surface roughness. In addition, during the 30 000 bending cycles, the resistance change (ΔR) of the flexible a-ITO/Ag/c-ITO triple-layer structure was 4.12%. For environmental reliability, the ΔR values of the flexible a-ITO/Ag/c-ITO triple-layer structure were 2.86% and 0.96% at the environmental temperature of 80 °C-50% and −40 °C, respectively. The above results indicate that the a-ITO/Ag/c-ITO triple-layer structure can be utilized to construct a promising TCO electrode. Finally, flexible and foldable capacitive-type TSPs were fabricated with multiple touch points using the a-ITO/Ag/c-ITO triple-layer electrode.