Improvement of optical and electric characteristics of MoO₃/Ag film/MoO₃ flexible transparent electrode with metallic grid

In this paper, the authors report rationally designed, innovative tri-layer flexible transparent conductive electrodes (TCEs) fabricated via thermal deposition. The proposed structure improves transparency compared with that of the traditional tri-layer electrode (dielectric/metal film/dielectric) by using metallic grid patterns (dielectric/metal grids/dielectric). The obtained MoO₃/Ag grids/MoO₃ TCEs show low sheet resistance and good mechanical properties. The sheet resistance of the proposed electrodes is 5.88 Ω/square and the transmittance reaches 76.5%, which are better than those of conventional MoO₃/Ag film/MoO₃ electrodes (6.12 Ω/square, <70%). The mechanical properties are significantly improved compared with those of MoO₃/Ag film/MoO₃ in the bending test under both tensile and compressive stress. The surface features of the MoO₃/Ag grids/MoO₃ TCEs were measured using the contact angle method to calculate the surface energy and polarity. The polarity is 0.5-0.26, which is better than those of indium tin oxide (0.35) and MoO₃/Ag film/MoO₃ (0.5-0.0058) electrodes for 0-800 bending cycles. The proposed flexible transparent electrodes show good optical, electrical, and mechanical characteristics and have potential for application in optoelectronics.