Abstract
Variation of sheet resistance of silver nanowires based hybrid conductive electrodes under continuous applied bias. Interconnecting silver nanowires with conductive polymer wrapped carbon nanotubes significantly improves the electrical stability of electrode and helps to overcome the failure issue of silver nanowires network.
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•A novel method to improve the electrical stability of silver nanowires network electrodes is reported.•The conductive polymer wrapped CNTs were used to interconnect the individual NWs and to produce electrically robust conductive hybrid electrode.•The hybrid electrode with modified carbon nanotubes shows highly stable electrical performance in comparison with silver nanowires electrode.
Silver nanowires have high potential to replace the conventional transparent conductors in many applications. However, the electrical instability of silver nanowires especially when heated as a result of electrical current passage causes the failure of this type of conductors and thus may limit their uses in many applications. In this study, a novel approach based on interconnecting the individual nanowires with conductive polymer wrapped carbon nanotubes is examined to improve the stability of silver nanowires network. The hybrid electrode with modified carbon nanotubes shows highly stable electrical performance in comparison to silver nanowires electrode. Under continuous electrical stress, slight variation in the sheet resistance of the hybrid electrode was noticed and was about two order of magnitude less than that of silver nanowires electrode. Moreover, the thermal studies reveal that the hybrid electrode stabilizes at much lower temperature than that of silver nanowires electrode. The findings show that the proposed approach is very promising to overcome the failure issue of silver nanowires and to increase the feasibility of their use for device applications.