Facile and Efficient Patterning Method for Silver Nanowires and Its Application to Stretchable Electroluminescent Displays.

The patterning of silver nanowires (AgNWs) is subject to critical challenges, which has seriously limited its practical application. This work describes a simple and efficient method combining screen printing with vacuum filtration for patterning AgNWs networks. The screen-printed polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) mask layer was shown to be strongly adhered to the filtration membrane, which resulted in well-defined sharp edge of deposited AgNWs patterns, and 50 μm of patterning resolution was achieved. The patterned films with low densities of AgNWs (≤15 μg/cm2) were transferred to the surface of PDMS to make patterned stretchable transparent conductive films (TCFs). The low sheet resistance of 7.3 Ω/sq was achieved at an optical transmittance of 79.6% (at 550 nm wavelength) with AgNWs deposition density of only 12.5 μg/cm2. As an application example, the patterned TCFs were used as the top electrodes to fabricate stretchable alternating-current electroluminescent (ACEL) displays with stretchability up to 70% of its original dimension, which were applied to a smart system for simulating heart beats together with a digitally operated flexible circuit. The ACEL device exhibited a bright and uniform emission with clear and smooth edge even with the pattern width as narrow as 100 μm, as well as the exceptional elasticity and durability in spite of bending, stretching and twisting. The present work provides a new way of patterning AgNWs, and can be extended to a variety of applications.