Fabrication And Properties Of Copper Nanowires For Transparent Conductive Electrodes

Transparent electrodes are closely related to our lives.They have been widely used in displays,touch screens and solar cells.With the development of science and technology,transparent electrodes tend to be flexible.The emergence of flexible devices and wearable devices puts forward new requirements for them.Indium tin oxide(ITO)is a commonly used electrode material,but it is no longer applicable for its brittleness and the shortage of indium,so it is urgent to find an alternative material.Copper nanowires(Cu NWs)-based transparent electrodes are widely used for they can meet the requirements of flexibility and have relatively good performance.However,Cu NWs are easily be oxidized in air.Therefore,it is necessary to explore new methods to improve the synthesis quality and chemical stability of Cu NWs.This paper is divided into two parts.In order to obtain the Cu NWs with large aspect ratio,the method of synthesizing Cu NWs by using the mixture of Hexadecylamine(HDA)and octadecylamine(ODA)as the capping agent was adopted.The results show that the amount of nanoparticles and organic residues in the synthesized Cu NWs is very small,while the amount of NWs is relatively large and the quality is high.The diameter of NWs is about 50 nm,the length is over 50 ?m,and the aspect ratio is over 1000,some even up to 2000.In order to improve the electrical conductivity of NWs,glacial acetic acid cleaning method was adopted.Experimental results show that Glacial acetic acid well removed particles and residual organic matter on the surface of NWs,the electrode under the 80%,90% and 95% transmittance sheet resistance respectively only about 20 ?/sq,90 ?/sq and about 200 ?/sq.In order to improve the chemical stability of NWs,a layer of nickel was electroplated on the surface of NWs.The results show that under the condition of low temperature(< 50 ?),the sheet resistance of all nickel plated electrodes is basically unchanged in 7 days,showing good chemical stability.Under the condition of high temperature(> 80 ?),only the electrode with a thin nickel layer has a sharp increase in the sheet resistance within 7 days,the electrodes with other thickness of nickel layer still have good chemical stability...