Laser-Induced Silver Nanowires/Polymer Composites for Flexible Electronics and Electromagnetic Compatibility Application

Bril’, I., Voronin, A., Fadeev, Y., (...), Simunin, M., Khartov, S. // Polymers//

Nowadays, the Internet of Things (IOT), electronics, and neural interfaces are becoming an integral part of our life. These technologies place unprecedentedly high demands on materials in terms of their mechanical and electrical properties. There are several strategies for forming conductive layers in such composites, e.g., volume blending to achieve a percolation threshold, inkjet printing, lithography, and laser processing. The latter is a low-cost, environmentally friendly, scalable way to produce composites. In our work, we synthesized AgNW and characterized them using Ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy (UV-vis), Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and Selective area electron diffraction (SAED). We found that our AgNW absorbed in the UV-vis range of 345 to 410 nm. This is due to the plasmon resonance phenomenon of AgNW. Then, we applied the dispersion of AgNW on the surface of the polymer substrate, dried them and we got the films of AgNW.. We irradiated these films with a 432 nm laser. As a result of the treatment, we observed two processes. The first one was the sintering and partial melting of nanowires under the influence of laser radiation, as a consequence of which, the sheet resistance dropped more than twice. The second was the melting of the polymer at the interface and the subsequent integration of AgNW into the substrate. This allowed us to improve the adhesion from 0–1 B to 5 B, and to obtain a composite capable of bending, with radius of 0.5 mm. We also evaluated the shielding efficiency of the obtained composites. The shielding efficiency for 500–600 nm thick porous film samples were 40 dB, and for 3.1–4.1 µm porous films the shielding efficiency was about 85–90 dB in a frequency range of 0.01–40 GHz. The data obtained by us are the basis for producing flexible electronic components based on AgNW/PET composite for various applications using laser processing methods.