Patterned flexible Silver Nanowire/2D MXene transparent conducting electrode for organic light-emitting diodes

Abstract

With the advent of numerous flexible optoelectronic applications, the importance of flexible and stable transparent conducting electrodes (TCEs) has been considerable. The conventional silver nanowire (AgNW) is a promising candidate as TCEs due to its decent opto-electrical properties and solution processibility. However, AgNW's high surface root mean square (RMS) roughness, relatively high sheet resistance, and low work function (∼4.5 eV) limit the usage for display applications. In this work, we design and study the AgNW and MXene (Ti₃C₂T_x) hybrid TCEs for flexible organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) to enhance the optoelectrical properties and the hole injection within the device. Experiment investigation is carried out via an application of AgNW/MXene (AgMX) hybrid TCEs as a bottom electrode for OLEDs devices in which the photolithography process and lift-off technique are employed for such fabrication. The hybrid TCEs indicate high optical transparency (86.8 % at 550 nm) and low sheet resistance (24.1 Ω/cm²) as well as improved surface morphology, enabling the efficient OLEDs operation. The optimized OLEDs exhibit a clear and stable red electroluminescence (EL) peak with an improved maximum external quantum efficiency (EQE) and luminance of 5.25 % and 3421.7 cd/m², respectively. Furthermore, the hybrid TCEs are readily formed on poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) substrate, showing high durability under the bending test up to 100,000 cycles. The results demonstrate that adopting AgMX TCEs is a reasonable strategy for obtaining proper flexible optoelectronic devices.