Flexible Transparent Conductive Film Based on Silk Fibroin and Silver Nanowires and Its Photoelectric Applications

Silk fibroin has excellent biocompatibility and can be used in fields such as biomedicine and tissue engineering. In order to explore the application of silk fibroin in different cross-cutting fields, we synthesized silver nanowires with a high aspect ratio, which were spin-coated on a glass substrate. Then, casted the regenerated silk fibroin solution, flexible conductive film with excellent sheet resistance and good light transmittance was obtained after drying. To explore the application in the field of optoelectronics, a simple organic solar cell was prepared by replacing the traditional ITO-glass substrate with the silver nanowires-silk fibroin (Ag-SF) film. The silver nanowires form a fully contacted grid, which are firmly coated with silk fibroin, the structure of Ag-SF film is not destroyed by the introduction of the silver nanowires. The transmissions of Ag-SF film at 550 nm decrease from 97% to 81% as the numbers of spin coatings of the silver nanowires solution increase. The square resistances of Ag-SF film decrease from the highest 33.6 Ω/sq to 6.0 Ω/sq with the increase of the numbers of spin coatings of the nano-silver wire solution. The photoelectric conversion efficiency of the organic solar cell is 4.78%, the open-circuit voltage is 0.67 V, and the short-circuit current is 15.22 mA/cm2. © 2021, Materials Review Magazine. All right reserved.