title: Healable capacitive touch screen sensors based on transparent composite electrodes comprising silver nanowires and a furan/maleimide diels-alder cycloaddition polymer.
abstract: A healable transparent capacitive touch screen sensor has been fabricated based on a healable silver nanowire-polymer composite electrode. The composite electrode features a layer of silver nanowire percolation network embedded into the surface layer of a polymer substrate comprising an ultrathin soldering polymer layer to confine the nanowires to the surface of a healable Diels-Alder cycloaddition copolymer and to attain low contact resistance between the nanowires. The composite electrode has a figure-of-merit sheet resistance of 18 Ω/sq with 80% transmittance at 550 nm. A surface crack cut on the conductive surface with 18 Ω is healed by heating at 100 °C, and the sheet resistance recovers to 21 Ω in 6 min. A healable touch screen sensor with an array of 8×8 capacitive sensing points is prepared by stacking two composite films patterned with 8 rows and 8 columns of coupling electrodes at 90° angle. After deliberate damage, the coupling electrodes recover touch sensing function upon heating at 80 °C for 30 s. A capacitive touch screen based on Arduino is demonstrated capable of performing quick recovery from malfunction caused by a razor blade cutting. After four cycles of cutting and healing, the sensor array remains functional.
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, University of California , Los Angeles, California 90095, United States.
authors.forename: Junpeng
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Jiajie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Liang
authors.forename: Lu
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Fengbo
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Ren
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.forename: Juan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Shuhua
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Qi
authors.forename: Qibing
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Pei
keywords: capacitive touch sensor; self-healing; silver nanowire; transparent composite electrode