Copper Mesh Templated by Breath-Figure Polymer Films as Flexible Transparent Electrodes for Organic Photovoltaic Devices

Metal mesh is a significant candidate of flexible transparent electrodes to substitute the current state-of-the-art material indium tin oxide (ITO) for future flexible electronics. However, there remains a challenge to fabricate metal mesh with order patterns by a bottom-up approach. In this work, high-quality Cu mesh transparent electrodes with ordered pore arrays are prepared by using breath-figure polymer films as template. The optimal Cu mesh films present a sheet resistance of 28.7 Ω·sq–1 at a transparency of 83.5%. The work function of Cu mesh electrode is tuned from 4.6 to 5.1 eV by Ag deposition and the following short-time UV–ozone treatment, matching well with the PEDOT:PSS (5.2 eV) hole extraction layer. The modified Cu mesh electrodes show remarkable potential as a substitute of ITO/PET in the flexible OPV and OLED devices. The OPV cells constructed on our Cu mesh electrodes present a similar power conversion efficiency of 2.04% as those on ITO/PET electrodes. The flexible OLED prototype devices can achieve a brightness of 10 000 cd at an operation voltage of 8 V.