Transparent conducting films of silver hybrid films formed by near-field electrospinning

• Low resistance and high transparent films simultaneously obtained.
• Ag mesh used as a backbone to electrically connect open spaces between Ag NWs.
• NFES is proposed as a fabrication tool of Ag mesh on insulating substrate.
• To fabricated fine electrodes on insulating substrate microscale is very difficult.
• We use with the guiding-ring structure to confine the laterally disturbed cone-jet mode.

Transparent conducting films (TCFs) are critical in the implementation of the low resistance TCFs of <30 Ω/square at the transmittance of >90% for the realization of commercial devices such as LEDs and solar cells. We fabricate the hybrid structures of the spin-coated silver nanowire film and the electro-spun silver nanoparticle mesh in order to reduce the sheet resistance of TCFs at high transmittance. After the patterning of the electro-spun Ag NP mesh, the Ag NW solution was spin-coated on the top of the electro-spun mesh pattern. The Ag NP mesh functioned as a backbone to connect the electrically non-connected spaces between the Ag NWs. The fabrication of TCFs on an insulating substrate by near-field electrospinning (NFES) is very difficult because the insulating substrate blocks the electric field between the nozzle and collecting plate during electrospinning. We successfully fabricated the low-resistance microscale electrodes with a line width narrower than 100 µm using NFES on an insulating substrate. In this study, we use a NFES as a tool for the easy and fast fabrication of microscale mesh electrodes without costly process steps.