Heater plates or sheets that are visibly transparent have many interesting applications in optoelectronic devices such as displays, as well as in defrosting, defogging, gas sensing and point-of-care disposable devices. In recent years, there have been many advances in this area with the advent of next generation transparent conducting electrodes (TCE) based on a wide range of materials such as oxide nanoparticles, CNTs, graphene, metal nanowires, metal meshes and their hybrids. The challenge has been to obtain uniform and stable temperature distribution over large areas, fast heating and cooling rates at low enough input power yet not sacrificing the visible transmittance. This review provides topical coverage of this important research field paying due attention to all the issues mentioned above.

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Transparent conducting electrodes (TCEs) have been made on flat, flexible, and curved surfaces, following a crack template method in which a desired surface was uniformly spray-coated with a crackle precursor (CP) and metal (Ag) was deposited by vacuum evaporation. An acrylic resin (CP1) and a SiO2 nanoparticle-based dispersion (CP2) derived from commercial products served as CPs to produce U-shaped cracks in highly interconnected networks. The crack width and the density could be controlled by varying the spray conditions, resulting in varying template thicknesses. By depositing Ag in the crack regions of the templates, we have successfully produced Ag wire network TCEs on flat-flexible PET sheets, cylindrical glass tube, flask and lens surface with transmittance up to 86%, sheet resistance below 11 Ω/□ for electrothermal application. When used as a transparent heater by joule heating of the Ag network, AgCP1 and AgCP2 on PET showed high thermal resistance values of 515 and 409 °C cm(2)/W, respectively, with fast response (<20 s), requiring only low voltages (<5 V) to achieve uniform temperatures of ∼100 °C across large areas. Similar was the performance of the transparent heater on curved glass surfaces. Spray coating in the context of crack template is a powerful method for producing transparent heaters, which is shown for the first time in this work. AgCP1 with an invisible wire network is suited for use in proximity while AgCP2 wire network is ideal for use in large area displays viewed from a distance. Both exhibited excellent defrosting performance, even at cryogenic temperatures.

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We report a highly transparent, low resistance Ag metal network templated by a cracked polymer thin film and its incorporation in an organic solar cell. The performance of this scalable metallic network is comparable to that of conventional ITO electrodes. This is a general approach to replace ITO in diverse thin film devices.

Low power electrothermal heating behavior of junctionless transparent Ag mesh is explored for large area defrosting application.

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