Effect of Inductively Coupled Plasma on Multilayer Electrodes for Flexible Single-Layer Touch Screen Panels

We investigated the effect of inductively coupled plasma (ICP) on multilayer electrodes for flexible capacitive touch sensors. We found that using ICP during Ag deposition generally increased the conductivity and transmittance of multilayer electrodes. As a result, in the case of the multilayer electrode with an ICP power of 150 W during Ag deposition, 5.7 Ω/sq of sheet resistance and 89.6% of transmittance (550 nm) have been achieved. We demonstrate that the crystallization of the ICP supplied Ag layer in multilayer electrodes leads to the smooth surface roughness of the multilayer film; the smooth surface roughness provided low light scattering. As a result, the crystallized Ag thin film by ICP improved the sheet resistance and transmittance of multilayer electrodes. Finally, we fabricated a 221 × 130 mm (active layer)-sized single-layer touch screen panel (TSP) using multilayer electrodes with ICP on a corning glass and polyethylene terephthalate flexible substrate. The single-layer TSPs show high linearity and sensitivity with multitouches.