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Silver-Based Nano‘Spider Webs’ for Flexible Displays
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Mr. Nitheesh M. Nair*
Email: nitheesh7299@gmail.com
Smartphones have become a ubiquitous part of modern life. One of the major issues with current smartphone technology
is the brittleness of the screen. This causes them to easily break, with the replacement a significant fraction of the overall phone cost (usually greater than 60%). Many solutions, such as gorilla glass, screen guards, and protective cases are available in the market but still the issue has not been effectively tackled. According to The Economic Times (27May 2017), approximately one in every four Indians drop their phones more than four times in a year and more than 40% of users have a scratched smartphone screen. Android authority statistics show nearly two screens are broken every second in the United States and the amount spend for replacement was
more than $3.4 billion just in the year of 2018. Clearly, this is a serious issue that requires innovative technological solutions.
In smartphones, the display and the capacitive touch screen need a special type of material as a top layer coating. This is referred to as a transparent conductor (TC), and as the name implies, it is transparent to visible light while being electrically conductive. Indium Tin Oxide, popularly known as ITO, is the material of choice as a TC in smartphones. It has desirable properties, such as optical transparency greater than 80% and electrical sheet resistance as low as 30 ohm/sq. However, ITO is expensive due to the scarcity of the indium and the complexity in coating the material. Typically, vapor deposition processes, such as sputtering or pulsed laser
* Mr. Nitheesh M. Nair, PhD Scholar from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, is pursuing his research on “Printed Silver Nanowire-Based Flexible Transparent Conducting Electrodes”. His popular science story entitled “Silver-Based Nano Spider Webs for Flexible Displays” has been selected for AWSAR Award.