Low-Resistant Electrical and Robust Mechanical Contacts of Self-Attachable Flexible Transparent Electrodes with Patternable Circuits

Abstract

Flexible, transparent, conductive electrodes are key elements of emerging flexible electronic and energy devices. Such electrodes should form an intimate physical contact with various active components of flexible devices to ensure stable, low-resistant electrical contacts. However, contact formation techniques are based largely on conventional soldering, conductive pastes, mechanical clamping, and thin film deposition. These generally result in damaged, contaminated, bulky, and uncontrollable contact interfaces. A self-attachable, flexible, transparent, and conductive electrode that is based on a distinctive design of regular grid patterns into which bioinspired adhesive architectures and percolating Ag nanowires are integrated is proposed. Based on this integrated design, the proposed electrode forms reliable, low-resistant electrical contacts; strong mechanical adhesive contacts; and ultra-clean, damage-free contact interfaces with active device components by attaching onto the components without using additional conductive pastes, mechanical pressing, or vacuum deposition processes. The contact interfaces of the electrode and device components remain stable even when the electrode is extremely bent. Moreover, specific electronic circuits can be generated on the electrode surface by a selective deposition of Ag nanowires. This enables simple interconnections of diverse electronic components on its surface.