Heating-Induced Self-Healing of Tin Incorporated Copper Microfiber Network for Recoverable Transparent Conductive Electrodes

Commercial indium tin oxide (ITO) has been limited in utility due to its brittleness and high cost. Here, a flexible Sn-Cu hybrid metallic network with a low sheet resistance of 3.71 Ω sq −1 at 90% transparency was synthesized by a facile solution electro-writing method, exceeding the performance of ITO film. By incorporating Sn nanoparticles into a Cu microfiber network matrix, a heating-induced self-healing recoverable metallic network was obtained. The Sn-Cu microfiber transparent conductive electrode (TCE) endured a sheet resistance increase of ~ 2.6% after 1000 bending cycles, and a decrease of ~ 2.0% was found after a heating-induced self-healing process was subsequently conducted on the TCE. These results indicate that the proposed Sn nanoparticle incorporated self-healing copper metallic network can be expected to be a potential replacement for conventional ITO film and could be widely used in flexible and recoverable electronics.