Highly flexible, transparent, conductive and antibacterial films made of spin-coated silver nanowires and a protective ZnO layer

•ZnO layer solves the oxidation and adhension problem of AgNWs.•Rs and transmittance can be controlled by AgNW's deposition number.•Rs of AgNW/ZnO films remain stable after 1000 bending cycles.•AgNWs based TCFs show an excellent antibacterial properties.

We prepared highly flexible, transparent, conductive and antibacterial film by spin coating a silver nanowire suspension on a poly (ethylene terephthalate) (PET) substrate. The ZnO layer covered the conductive silver nanowire (AgNW) network to protect the metal nanowires from oxidization and enhance both wire-to-wire adhesion and wire-to-substrate adhesion. It is found that the number of AgNW coatings correlates with both the sheet resistance (Rs) and the transmittance of the AgNW/ZnO composite films. An excellent 92% optical transmittance in the visible range and a surface sheet resistance of only 9 Ω sq−1 has been achieved, respectively. Even after bending 1000 times (5 mm bending radius), we found no significant change in the sheet resistance or optical transmittance. The real-time sheet resistance measured as a function of bending radius also remains stable even at the smallest measured bending radius (1 mm). The AgNW/ZnO composite films also show antibacterial effects which could be useful for the fabrication of wearable electronic devices.