What is ITO?
Indium Tim Oxide(ITO), is a thin-film material, usually used in LCD,PDP,EL/OLED, Touch Panel, Solar Cells and transparency electrode of other electronic instruments.
ITO is now widely used in electronic products, but the future of electronics, such as mobile terminals, wearable devices, smart appliances, etc. Touch panel is hoped to become the large-size, cost-reduction and flexible. This is bound to promote the new materials to replace traditional ITO.
Traditional ITO thin film can’t used in flexible application, and its inherent problems—-conductivity and light transmittance are difficult to overcome. Thus, numerous manufacturers begin to find the substitutes for ITO, such as silver nanowires, metal mesh, carbon nanotubes(CNTs) and graphene.
From technology and marketization level, metal mesh and silver nanowires will be the two major roles in new-developing touch technology.
ITO alternatives – silver nanowires
What is the silver nanowires?
Silver nanowires (SNW, silvernano wire) technology, the silver nanowires ink material is applied on plastic or glass substrate, and then using the laser lithography technology to portray into a transparent conductive film with nanoscale silver line conductive network pattern.
The Advantages and Disadvantages of Silver Nanowires Advantages:
1.the production process is simple and good rate.
2.since the line width is small, the conductive thin film made of silver nanowires technique can achieve higher light transmittance than the one made of a metal grid technology.
3.compared to the metal mesh film, silver nanowires films own a smaller radius of curvature and the resistance change rate is small while bending, the application on devices with surface display, such as smart watches, bracelets, etc, has more advantages.
4.besides excellent electrical conductivity than silver, because of the nanoscale size effect, silver nanowires also have excellent transparency and resistance to flex.
5.large aspect ratio of silver nanowires effect makes its applications in conductive plastic, thermal plastic and other fields also have outstanding advantages.
Disadvantages:
With the severe diffuse reflection light irradiation in outdoor scenes, the screen reflective strongly, you can not see the screen clearly.
Silver nanowires Status
1. although silver nanowires has slightly high raw material costs, its preparation is simple, thus the overall cost is not high. And diffuse phenomenon can use some techniques to reduce;
2. the silver nanowires coated with a high refractive index material film;
3. blackening silver nanowires surface;
4. Reduce the reflective intensity;
5. roughened silver nanowires.