Flexibility and non-destructive conductivity measurements of Ag nanowire based transparent conductive films via terahertz time domain spectroscopy.

Highly stable and flexible transparent electrodes are fabricated based on silver nanowires (AgNWs) on both polyethylene-terephthalate (PET) and polyimide (PI) substrates. Terahertz time domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) was utilized to probe AgNW films while bended with a radius 5 mm to discover conductivity of bended films which was further analyzed through Drude-Smith model. AgNW films experience little degradation in conductivity (<3%) before, after, and during 1000 bending cycles. Highly stable AgNW flexible electrodes have broad applications in flexible optoelectronic and electronic devices. THz-TDS is an effective technique to investigate the electrical properties of the bended and flattened conducting films in a nondestructive manner. (C) 2017 Optical Society of America