Fabrication of Water Base Silver Nanowire Conductive Ink and Large Scale Flexible Transparent Conductive Film

A water based conductive ink was fabricated with HPMC as binder, FSO-100 as surfactant and silver nanowire (AgNW) as conductor and the transparent conductive film was fabricated on PET substrates by Mayer rod coating process. The effects of the concentration of HPMC, FSO-100 and AgNW on the opto-electrical properties of the transparent conductive film were investigated. The results show that the addition of FSO-100 can significantly enhance the wettability between conductive ink and PET substrate, but excess FSO-100 results in the increase of sheet resistance. The introduction of HPMC reduces the aggregation of AgNWs while high concentration of HPMC decreases the conductivity. The AgNWs of high concentration decreases the sheet resistance and transmittance. With 2.6 mg/mL AgNW, the transparent conductive film shows a sheet resistance of 12 Omega/sq, a transmittance of 94.02% at 550 nm, a figure of merit (FOM) of 448.63, a root-mean-square surface roughness of 7.28 nm, and it retains the original opto-electrical properties after 1000 times of bending, providing great potential for the application in wearable devices and flexible organic light-emitting diodes.