Blade-Coating Fabrication and Enhanced Performance of Scalable Large-Area Flexible Copper Nanowire Transparent Conductive Films

Flexible transparent conductive films (TCFs) are essential for next-generation optoelectronics, requiring high transparency, low sheet resistance, mechanical robustness, and environmental stability. Copper offers high conductivity at low cost, but Cu-based TCFs remain limited by scalability, rapid oxidation, and insufficient durability. Here, we report an integrated, scalable route to flexible copper nanowire (CuNW) TCFs by combining purified, dispersible CuNW synthesis, blade-coated large-area network assembly on PET, and conformal ITO encapsulation via room-temperature magnetron sputtering to improve operational stability while preserving conductivity. Systematic characterizations confirm the synthesized CuNWs exhibit a high aspect ratio (627.6), single-crystalline structure, and high purity. The ITO-coated CuNW TCFs with an optimized ITO thickness of 30 nm achieve a superior figure of merit (FoM) of 117.27, accompanied by a sheet resistance of 12.99 Ω sq–1 and optical transmittance of 79.19%. Moreover, the ITO-coated CuNW TCFs demonstrate exceptional environmental and mechanical stability, retaining 94% of initial heating capability after 500 thermal cycles and exhibiting only 13.74% resistance variation after 1000 bending cycles. This work establishes a practical, scalable route for fabricating high-performance flexible TCFs, offering significant potential for applications in flexible displays, wearable sensors, and transparent heaters.