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Highly conductive sandwich-structured CNT/PEDOT:PSS/CNT transparent conductive films for OLED electrodes

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Abstract

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly (styrene sulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) were employed to prepare sandwich-structured CNT/PEDOT:PSS/CNT transparent conductive films (TCFs) on flexible polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate by a spraying method. Based on the film morphology, we suggest that the CNTs were embedded in PEDOT:PSS. The structured film was more stable and did not peel off during post-processing nitric acid treatment. Ethylene glycol (EG) was used to improve the conductivity of the film, and the best ratio of PEDOT:PSS to EG was 10:5. XPS and Raman spectroscopy studies revealed that the non-conductive sodium dodecylbenzene sulfonate and PSS were removed during the nitric acid treatment. TCF sheet resistance as low as 95.15 Ω/sq at 87.72% transmittance (at a wavelength of 550 nm) was obtained. When the CNT/PEDOT:PSS/CNT-TCF was used as an anode in an organic light emitting diode, the high luminance of the device was 1598 cd/cm2 at 14 V, and the maximum current efficiency was 1.5 cd/A at 13 V.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin China (Grant No. 15JCZDJC37900) and the Science and Technology Plans of Tianjin China (Grant No. 17PTSYJC00050).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tianjin Key Laboratory of Advanced Fibers and Energy Storage, School of Material Science and Engineering, Tianjin Polytechnic University, Tianjin, 300387, People’s Republic of China

    Ze-Zeng Gu, Ying Tian, Hong-Zhang Geng, Danielle S. Rhen, Li-Chao Jing, Tao Wang, Zi-Han Xu & Xiao-Tong Yuan

  2. Department of Physics, VIT-AP University, Amaravati, Andhra Pradesh, 522237, India

    Anita Sagadevan Ethiraj

  3. John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

    Xingcai Zhang

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  1. Ze-Zeng Gu
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Correspondence to Hong-Zhang Geng.

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Gu, ZZ., Tian, Y., Geng, HZ. et al. Highly conductive sandwich-structured CNT/PEDOT:PSS/CNT transparent conductive films for OLED electrodes. Appl Nanosci 9, 1971–1979 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13204-019-01006-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13204-019-01006-4

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