Image analysis for measuring rod network properties

Abstract

In recent years, metallic nanowires have been attracting significant attention as next-generation flexible transparent conductive films. The performance of films depends on the network structure created by nanowires. Gaining an understanding of their structure, such as connectivity, coverage, and alignment of nanowires, requires the knowledge of individual nanowires inside the microscopic images taken from the film. Although nanowires are flexible up to a certain extent, they are usually depicted as rigid rods in many analysis and computational studies. Herein, we propose a simple and straightforward algorithm based on the filtering in the frequency domain for detecting the rod-shape objects inside binary images. The proposed algorithm uses a specially designed filter in the frequency domain to detect image segments, namely, the connected components aligned in a certain direction. Those components are post-processed to be combined under a given merging rule in a single rod object. In this study, the microscopic properties of the rod networks relevant to the analysis of nanowire networks were measured for investigating the opto-electric performance of transparent conductive films and their alignment distribution, length distribution, and area fraction. To verify and find the optimum parameters for the proposed algorithm, numerical experiments were performed on synthetic images with predefined properties. By selecting proper parameters, the algorithm was used to investigate silver nanowire transparent conductive films fabricated by the dip coating method.