Technical requirements, manufacturing processes and cost efficiency for transparent electrodes based on silver nanowires and carbon nanotubes

We outline the reasons why indium tin oxides is still not replaced in transparent electrodes although enormous research has been carried out in the past decade. We evaluate the advantages and drawbacks of possible alter- native materials with regard to material performance and cost-efficiency. As a result, we state that graphene is a very promising material but the production costs are very high. Without a technological breakthrough to- wards an energy- and material-efficient synthesis of graphene, this material will remain unfeasible for the use in industrially scaled production of transparent electrodes. Silver nanowires are easier to process but they exhibit high haze. Within our approach we produce ultra-transparent silver nanowire films and silver nanowire/carbon nanotube hybrid films with low haze. Our manufacturing technique is scalable on conventional smart phone glass and we present a conceptual production cell for the fabrication of ultra-transparent electrodes with optical transmission higher than 97 % and sheet resistance lower than 70 Ω/sq. The optoelectrical performance of these films is superior to most of the recently published silver nanowire films. The theoretical material range for 1 g of AgNWs is 165 m

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