(180q) Ag NW-graphene hybrid based flexible electrode:Enhanced mechano-electric property of the hybrid device

There have been large demands for flexible transparent conducting electrodes (TCEs) for the application towards high performance displays and wearable electronics. At this moment, conductive oxides (e.g., indium tin oxide; ITO) have been widely employed in various electronic devices owing to their excellent optical and electrical properties. Despite such the excellent properties of ITO as transparent conductive material, its application towardsflexible TCEs has been limited because of the disadvantages of ITO including mechanicalbrittleness, expensive prices (materials and production cost), complex patterning and supply concerns. Most importantly, the ITO can be easily cracked under bending, have increased high demand to replace ITO with novel TCE materials.

In this context, networks of silver nanowires (Ag NWs) have been considered as a cost-effective alternative in the area of stretchable and flexible devices because of high mechanical sustainability of Ag NW-based conductors with comparable optical transparencycompared with that of ITO at equivalent electrical conductivity.

However, the practical and commercial application of Ag NW networks based TCEs are limited as the Ag NW also suffer from its insufficient electro-optical property or mechano-electrical properties. More specifically, such insufficient electrical conductivity of Ag NW network-based devices can be attributable to the inherent junction resistance associated with charge transport between randomly oriented nanowires. Despite several approaches to address aforementioned issues through the junction welding, composite with conducting polymer or conductive materials, it is still required to devise novel Ag NW based conductive materials for flexible TCE applications.

In this presentation, we present hybrid of Ag NW network and doped graphene with enhanced mechano-electric properties for the application towards flexible TCEs. We systematically investigated the effect of doped graphene on the mechano-electric andelectrical-optical properties through the systematic study with various combination of Ag NW and doped graphenes. Note that, selective-doping improved such electrical properties without any significant debilitation of optical transparency of conductors. In addition, the enhanced conductivity of doped GP allows a hybrid system to form co-percolating network in which Ag NWs can form a secondary conductive path at grain boundaries of polycrystalline GP.