Highly Flexible Touch Screen Panel Fabricated with Silver Nanowire Crossing Electrodes and Transparent Bridges

A capacitive-type touch screen panel (TSP) composed of silver nanowire (AgNW) crossing electrodes and transparent bridge structures was fabricated on a polycarbonate film. The transparent bridge structure was formed with a stack of Al-doped ZnO (AZO) electrodes and SU-8 insulator. The stable and robust continuity of the bridge electrode over the bridge insulator was achieved by making the side-wall slope of the bridge insulator low and depositing the conformal AZO film with atomic layer deposition. With an extended exposure time of photolithography, the lower part of the SU-8 layer around the region uncovered by the photomask can be exposed enough to the UV light scattered from the substrate. This leads to the low side-wall slope of the bridge insulator. The fabricated TSP sample showed a large capacitance change of 22.71% between with and without touching. Our work supplies the technological clue for ensuring long-term reliability to the highly flexible and transparent TSP made by using conventional fabrication processes.