Shear force strategy for preparation of aligned silver nanowire transparent conductive thin films

Silver nanowires transparent conductive films (AgNWs-TCFs) prepared by traditional rotary coating method, which will cause the failure of conductive channels of AgNWs-TCFs under current load because of their AgNWs distributing randomly, were restricted its industrial application of flexible electronic devices. In this paper, the aligned AgNWs-TCFs were deposited by using the shear force from the high-speed rotating concentrated nanowire solution. Based on the rheological performance test results, the preparation conditions were set at nanowire solution of 2.0 mg/mL and the substrate immersed in PEI of 0.5 mg/mL for 10 min. The aligned AgNWs-TCFs with one-layer structure (1 L-Aligned AgNWs-TCFs) and with perpendicular two-layer structure (2 L-Aligned AgNWs-TCFs) were obtained by shear rate of 400 rpm. It was found that the resistance of 1 L-Aligned AgNWs-TCFs showed a high degree of anisotropy, with a ratio of longitudinal and lateral resistance values of 3.60, while the resistance of 2 L-Aligned AgNWs-TCFs is isotropic similarly to randomly distribution AgNWs-TCFs. However, the current-loading stability of 2 L-Aligned AgNWs-TCFs is significantly improved. The failure voltage of 2 L-Aligned AgNWs-TCFs is 13 V, but that of randomly distributed AgNWs-TCFs is only 9 V. Compared to other aligned AgNWs-TCFs preparation methods, our method enables controllable preparation and industrial development of aligned AgNWs-TCFs.