Durable, High-Performance Silver-Based Transparent Electrodes with Anti-Reflection Coatings for Electroluminescent Devices

A key challenge in flexible optoelectronics is developing transparent electrodes (TEs) with high optical and electrical performance that can survive deformation. Here, silver-based TEs with anti-reflection coatings (STEAR) are developed and demonstrate a sheet resistance of 8.9 Ω/sq, 85% transmittance (including the substrate), and stability over 16,000 bending cycles. The STEAR film is constructed by coating silver nanowires (Ag NWs) on sputtered ultrathin silver as the conducting layer and achieves 97% substrate transmittance through a systematically optimized combination of anti-reflection coatings consisting of ZnO and Al2O3 layers. A flexible electroluminescent (EL) device using STEAR films exhibits stability over 10,000 bending cycles and achieves higher luminance at lower voltages compared to those using Ag NWs or commercial indium tin oxide (ITO) TEs.