Continuously fabricated transparent conductive polycarbonate/carbon nanotube nanocomposite films for switchable thermochromic applications
writer：Bing Zhou, Yahong Li, Guoqiang Zheng(通訊作者), Xianhu Liu, Kun Dai, Chuntai Liu, Changyu Shen, Zhanhu
keywords：transparent conductive film; continuous fabrication; adhesion; mechanical flexibility; thermochromic property
source：期刊
specific source：Journal of Materials Chemistry C, 2018,6: 8360-8371
Issue time：2018年
Flexible transparent conductive films (TCFs) have attracted more and more attention because of their wide range of potential applications in optical and electronic devices. Industrial-scale
manufacturing of high-performance TCFs is a challenge for wide applications. Here, TCFs based on polycarbonate (PC) film successively coated with multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) and single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) are continuously fabricated by a combined spraying and roll-to-roll (R2R) technique. Moreover, such continuous and scalable method is programmable and fully automated. The synergism between the successively sprayed MWNTs and SWNTs significantly enhances the conductivity and electrical homogeneity of the TCFs. Furthermore, such film (i.e., PM1S1) still keeps high transmittance (82% at 550 nm) which is only decreased by 6% compared with PC film. More importantly, no obvious decrease in conductivity of TCFs is detected after 1000 cycles of repeated bending, indicating its excellent mechanical flexibility. In addition, due to the synergistic effect, the adhesion and good environmental resistance have been significantly improved. With these advantages, the as-fabricated TCFs show great potentials in flexible smart windows with switchable thermochromic property. The proposed technique in this study is an effective approach for large-scale fabricating carbon nanotubes/polymer based TCFs, which are promising for a wide variety of practical applications.