Screen printing of silver nanowires: balancing conductivity with transparency while maintaining flexibility and stretchability

Abstract

Silver Nanowires: delicate balance in the properties A scalable and low cost synthetic and screen printing method of silver nanowires has been shown as versatile electrodes. A team led by Dr. Weiwei Li from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia develops a scalable method to make silver nanowire inks possessing excellent optical, electrical, and mechanical properties for transparent and flexible electronics. The silver nanowire is synthesized in a one-pot reaction followed by optimization of multiparameters such as the ink formulation. As a result, they obtain silver nanowire patterns with high conductivity of 1.9 × 105 S/m, a transmittance of 73% at the wavelength of 550 nm, sustainability of 1000 cycles of bending or stretching. The presented silver inks can meet the multiple requirements in many applications for transparent, stretchable, and flexible electronics.