Abstract-Flexibility and non-destructive conductivity measurements of Ag nanowire based transparent conductive films via terahertz time domain spectroscopy

GYUJEONG HWANG, 1,6 SONER BALCI, 2,6 M. ZEKI GÜNGÖRDÜ, 2 ALEX MALESKI, 2 JOSEPH WATERS, 2 SUNJONG LEE, 3 SANGJUN CHOI, 4 KYOUNGKOOK KIM, 5 SOOHAENG CHO, 1,7 AND SEONGSIN M. KIM2,8 1

Department of Physics, Yonsei University, Wonju-si, 26493, South Korea 2 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487, USA 3 Korea Institute of Industrial Technology, Cheonan-si, Chungcheongnam-do, 31056, South Korea 4 Vault Creation, Seoul 02865, South Korea 5 Department of Nano-Optical Engineering, Korea Polytechnic University, Gyeonggi-do 15086, South Korea 6 These authors contributed equally to this work 7 shcho@yonsei.ac.kr 8 seongsin@eng.ua.edu

https://www.osapublishing.org/DirectPDFAccess/BEB81319-BB6D-F786-B8A024732A097A53_360237/oe-25-4-4500.pdf?da=1&id=360237&seq=0&mobile=no

Highly stable and flexible transparent electrodes are fabricated based on silver nanowires (AgNWs) on both polyethylene-terephthalate (PET) and polyimide (PI) substrates. Terahertz time domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) was utilized to probe AgNW films while bended with a radius 5 mm to discover conductivity of bended films which was further analyzed through Drude-Smith model. AgNW films experience little degradation in conductivity (<3%) before, after, and during 1000 bending cycles. Highly stable AgNW flexible electrodes have broad applications in flexible optoelectronic and electronic devices. THz-TDS is an effective technique to investigate the electrical properties of the bended and flattened conducting films in a nondestructive manner.