Fabrication of composite transparent conductive electrodes based on silver nanowires

Abstract Composite transparent conductive electrodes (C-TCEs) have recently been produced using low-cost techniques to keep up with the boom in the fabrication and development of optoelectronic devices. In this article, silver nanowires (AgNWs) were successfully synthesized by a simple hydrothermal method using different molecular weights M W s of poly (N-vinylpyrrolidone) (PVP). Graphene oxide (GO) was prepared using the modified Hummers’ method and a reduction step was held on GO films to produce reduced GO (rGO). C-TCEs were fabricated by over-coating the AgNWs electrodes with rGO, or poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate to improve the roughness, surface energy, and sheet resistance. The influence of using lower and higher M W s of PVP on the yield, shape, and size of AgNWs was investigated. The results showed that using lower M W of PVP had a great effect on the yield, morphology, and aspect ratio of AgNWs with diameter of 46 nm and average length 12 µm. The optical, morphological, topographical, and electrical properties of TCEs were studied. AgNWs/rGO composite electrode provided the lowest surface roughness and surface energy of 250 nm and 47.95 mN/m, respectively, with a relatively high transparency of 78.2% at 550 nm light wavelength, and a low sheet resistance of 27 Ω/□.