Wormlike micelle assisted rod coating: a general method for facile fabrication of large-area conductive nanomaterial thin layer onto flexible plastics.

Through combined application of wormlike-micelle and rod-coating technique, a general method was demonstrated for the facile reparation of thin transparent conductive films (TCF) of various nanomaterials and their hybrids on flexible plastics. The cetyltrimethylammonium hydroxide (CTAOH)/p-toluenesulfonic acid (CTAT) wormlike micelle system was selected for both the dispersion of different nanomaterials and the enhancement of viscosities of the coating fluids. With the single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs)/wormlike micelle aqueous dispersions as coating fluid, TCFs of SWNTs on flexible poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) substrates made by rod-coating method were demonstrated. After doping by immersion into thionyl chloride solution, the sheet resistance of SWNTs thin films, which had a transmittance of about 78%, was as low as 480Ω/sq. This coating method was extended to the preparation of thin films or networks of other materials such as reduced graphene oxide and Ag nanowires. The obtained TCF from Ag nanowire networks has a low sheet resistance of 17Ω/sq, which is comparable to the value of best indium tin oxide (ITO) coating on plastic substrates. Finally, hybrid thin films of different nanomaterials were demonstrated by this method.