Flexible ITO-free sky-blue polymer light-emitting diodes and printed polymer solar cells based on AgNW/PI transparent conductive electrode

In this work, transparent and conductive as well as flexible silver nanowire/polyimide (AgNW/PI) composite film with an average figure of merit as high as 111.3, which is the ratio of electronic conductivity to optical conductivity, is produced by a simple peel-off method without any post treatments. When employing the AgNW/PI composite film as the flexible transparent conductive anode in blue polymer light-emitting diodes, the device shows a high external quantum efficiency of 3.42% which is comparable to the rigid indium tin oxide (ITO)-based control device with an efficiency of 3.96%. Moreover, for the flexible printed polymer solar cell (PSCs) with AgNW/PI as the transparent conductive anode, a high power conversion efficiency of 4.01% is achieved, which is also comparable to that of the rigid ITO-based PSC. This work systematically demonstrates that AgNW/PI composite film has a promising prospect for application in all kinds of flexible optoelectronic devices.