Silver nanowire electrodes for transparent light emitting devices based on WS2 monolayers

Transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC) monolayers with their direct band gap in the visible to near-infrared spectral range have emerged over the past years as highly promising semiconducting materials for optoelectronic applications. Progress in scalable fabrication methods for TMDCs like metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) and the ambition to exploit specific material properties, such as mechanical flexibility or high transparency, highlight the importance of suitable device concepts and processing techniques. In this work, we make use of the high transparency of TMDC monolayers to fabricate transparent light-emitting devices (LEDs). MOCVD-grown WS2 is embedded as the active material in a scalable vertical device architecture and combined with a silver nanowire (AgNW) network as a transparent top electrode. The AgNW network was deposited onto the device by a spin-coating process, providing contacts with a sheet resistance below 10 omega sq(-1) and a transmittance of nearly 80%. As an electron transport layer we employed a continuous 40 nm thick zinc oxide (ZnO) layer, which was grown by atmospheric pressure spatial atomic layer deposition (AP-SALD), a precise tool for scalable deposition of oxides with defined thickness. With this, LEDs with an average transmittance over 60% in the visible spectral range, emissive areas of several mm(2) and a turn-on voltage of around 3 V are obtained.

Automated summary

Transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC) monolayers have emerged as highly promising semiconducting materials for optoelectronic applications, with their direct band gap in the visible to near-infrared spectral range. In this work, transparent light-emitting devices (LEDs) were fabricated using TMDC monolayers and a silver nanowire (AgNW) network as a transparent top electrode. The devices showed good performance with an average transmittance of over 60% in the visible spectral range, emissive areas of several mm(2), and a turn-on voltage of around 3 V.