Fabrication of flexible transparent conductive coatings based on single-walled carbon nanotubes

Abstract

We have proposed a method for large-scale growth of thin nanotube films from solution on the surface of flexible, transparent substrates. Uniform nanotube deposition was achieved through the preparation of a stable colloidal nanotube solution in an aqueous surfactant solution. We examined the effect of the number of deposition cycles on the morphology of the films and their optical and electrical characteristics. The results demonstrate that the optical transmittance of the films decreases linearly with increasing film thickness, whereas their resistance decreases quadratically, which corresponds to three-dimensional nanotube percolation in the films. With increasing film thickness, the sheet resistance of the films drops from 400 to 15 kΩ/□ and their transmittance decreases from 85 to 40%, respectively.