[nanoPost] Carbon nanotubes solution for transparent coating and siplay

A French university laboratory has developed a stable aqueous solution of carbon nanotubes for easy transparent coating for display application

Display technologies are largely used in communication systems. Generally these systems include a glass sheet vacuum coated with a thin film of conductive oxide like ITO. The drawbacks of this technique are the high energy consumption and the impossibility to use such oxides on flexible substrates (flaws, delaminations). NTC have been proposed as alternative to such coatings but one needs now a appropriate method to coat substrates because NTC are insoluble in almost all solvents and uniform coating is required.

The technology proposed is based on non toxic solvents and let no trace of solvent.

Design: The solution can  be applied to virtually any substrate using a wide range of well-known  coating techniques (centrifugation, dip coating, spraying). The product therefore opens up new possibilities in the design and manufacture of consumer and industrial products, including the potential for extremely thin, flexible displays and very large formats or transparent backgrounds. Properties are at least similar of those of ITO: resistivity 10E2 to 10 E6 OhmE-2; transmittance at 632.8 nm 75% minimum; E10 = 0.8 to 1.8 V/μm ; E90 = 1.5 to 4.8 V/μm

Industrial applications include display (liquid crystals, plasma,); LED; Optical components (diffraction, Pockels cells…) ; flexible electronics (Schottky diode, transistor, capacitors…) ; photovoltaic cells