A water-based silver nanowire ink for fabricating high performance transparent conductive films

As a promising candidate of ITO, silver nanowire transparent conductive film had drawn much attention due to the excellent optical-electronic performance and flexible property. Water was considered as a promising candidate of organic solvents for dispersion of AgNWs. However, there was still few researches on water-based AgNWs ink and the influence of additives on the properties of AgNWs films. In this work, two water-based inks were proposed by adding trace of gellan gum and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) to enhance the dispersion of AgNWs in water and wettability with substrates. Transparent conductive films with excellent optical-electronic performance were obtained by scrape coating method using the prepared inks. The Feature of Merit (FOM) of the AgNWs-GG film and AgNWs-GG-PVA film exceeded 200, much better than pristine AgNWs film. And the uniformity of the sheet resistance (R-s) was also improved. Tape adhesion test showed AgNWs-GG-PVA film have excellent adhesion to substrates. Additionally, the TCFs fabricated by the prepared inks had better resistance of ethanol than the pristine AgNWs film.