Smoothing silver nanowires for optoelectronic applications

Silver nanowire meshes have shown potential for becoming a more robust, flexible alternative to traditional ceramic and brittle metal oxides. However, the current methods employed at making these films are not scalable and the high aspect ratios limit their final use. Spray coating is a technique that is widely used in many industries and has proven effective in many coating applications but continues to be limited by drying defects when used traditionally. A simple modification; pulsed spraying can decouple rheology and chemistry and allow for deposition of more uniform silver nanowire mesh films. Additional processing methods, such as metal mesh compression and matrix infilling with a CVD deposited plastic, Parylene-C, can yield a composite that solves roughness issues present with bare films. By combining all of these methods, a silver nanowire-parylene composite can be fabricated using fully scalable techniques ready for sheet-to-sheet or roll-to-roll processing. The composite is flexible, optically transparent, surface smooth, atmospherically stable and conductive, proving itself as a potential replacement for traditional transparent electrodes.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• Swartwout, Richard Michael Steuben

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Vladimir Bulović.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/117813

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/117813