Fabrication, Mechanisms, and Properties of High-Performance Flexible Transparent Conductive Gas-Barrier Films Based on Ag Nanowires and Atomic Layer Deposition.

Thin films of Ag nanowires (NWs) offer many advantages as transparent electrodes for flexible electronics, but their applications are hindered by issues including poor stability/durability of Ag NWs, high processing temperatures, heterogeneity of surfaces, and lack of gas-barrier function. This study reports novel mechanisms through which a conductive Hf:ZnO (HZO) film by atomic layer deposition (ALD) can be integrated with a sprayed Ag NWs film to address the issues of Ag NWs. First, the ALD surface reactions can induce fusing of the Ag NWs into a connected network without the need for a thermal sintering process. Second, the ALD process can in situ functionalize the Ag NWs to yield defect-free (in terms of blocking gas permeation) coverage of the ALD HZO over the entire nanowire surfaces, which also enhances the ALD-induced fusing of Ag NWs. The composite HZO/Ag NWs films exhibit low sheet resistance (15 Ω sq-1), low water vapor transmission rate (WVTR) (5.1 × 10-6 g m-2 day-1), high optical transmission (92%), excellent flexibility (12.5 mm bending radius), high stability/durability (against an extensive set of degradation modes and photolithographic patterning processes), and low processing temperature (90 °C) and can be used in perovskite solar cells to obtain high power conversion efficiency (14.46%).