A quick and facile solution -processed method for PEDOT:PSS transparent conductive thin film.

Abstract

PEDOT:PSS is a conducting organic polymer widely studied for a transparent conductive electrode. The conventional method to fabricate PEDOT:PSS thin film involves a post-treatment process entailing dipping into strong and toxic saturated acid to enhance the film’s conductivity. Eliminating the post-treatment process reduces excess strong saturated acid or solvent waste, shortening the fabricating time by half. Therefore, this study presents a quick and facile solution-processed method for fabricating the PEDOT:PSS transparent conductive thin film (without a post-treatment process) while still achieving the requirements for a transparent conductive electrode (TCE). A parametric study was conducted by adding 5 wt% to 80 wt% of benzene sulfonic acid (BA) to PEDOT:PSS during the formulation stage before being dried at elevated temperatures from 80 °C to 200 °C. The optimum sheet resistance and transmittance value could be achieved for a thin film fabricated from PEDOT:PSS added with 40 wt% of BA, and dried at 120 °C. The sheet resistance and transmittance values are 80 Ω/sq and 93.6%, respectively. The generated figure of merit (FOM) value is 70.1, indicating an improvement of almost five times compared to the FOM value of 14.6 generated using the conventional method, requiring a post-treatment process.