Highly flexible and conductive sodium carboxymethyl cellulose/silver nanowires composite films

摘要

Although transparent conductive films (TCFs) based on silver nanowires (AgNWs) have been researched widely, rough surface of TCFs and easy shedding of AgNWs limit further applications of TCFs. In this study, AgNWs were buried below the surface of the sodium carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) film to prepare flexible and transparent films via one-step solution process with different concentrations of AgNWs. The photoelectric properties of TCFs are related with the concentration of AgNWs. At a low concentration (0.25 mg/mL), the formed AgNWs conductive network showed a large gap, which would cause a high standard deviation value (18) in the sheet resistance test. Hence, the figure of merit (FOM) was used to evaluate the performance of TCFs. An optimum conductive film was compared with PET/AgNWs film to demonstrate the flexibility and long-term stability of this novel film. Moreover, a good resistance to organic solvents of the CMC/AgNWs film was observed. Besides, the CMC/AgNWs film showed a rapid-response of temperature under voltage as a transparent heater, indicating the potential application of this highly flexible and conductive CMC/AgNWs film.