Preparation of silver nanowire/AZO composite film as a transparent conductive material

In this paper, flexible, robustly adhesive, surface smooth and oxide-resistive AgNWs/AZO composite transparent conductive films (TCFs) were prepared by spin-coating solvothermal derived AgNWs followed by magnetron sputtering AZO protective layer, after which, annealing treatment at 200 degrees C for 20 min was adopted to further increase the performance of the composite film. The samples were characterized by means of X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, scan electron microscopy, scanning probe microscope, UV-Vis spectrophotometer and four point probe. The best result of AgNWs/AZO composite films was the one with a transmittance of 85% at 550 nm accompanied with a low sheet resistance of 19 Omega/square by controlling the spin coating times fixed at three. The figure of merit for the composite TCFs was 10.4, which was larger than the value of 8.8 for commercial ITO film. These amazing results would render the AgNWs/AZO composite TCFs an ideal candidate to replace conventional ITO for its potential application in flexible devices including OPV and OLED.