Nanopatterned metallic transparent electrodes for the near-infrared spectrum

Abstract

Near-infrared transparent electrodes constitute an essential component of light-emitting and photovoltaic devices widely employed in short- and long-range communication, light detection and ranging, biodiagnostics, security, virtual and augmented reality, night vision, gas sensing, and solar cells. However, the efficiency of all these devices and related applications suffers from significantly reduced transmittance of the indium tin oxide electrode compared to the visible wavelength range. Here, we explore the potential of randomly and uniformly arranged silver, gold, and aluminum nanopore and nanowire films for the near-infrared optoelectronics. We show that these metallic nanopatterned layers, except for randomly arranged nanoporous configurations, exhibit considerably higher performance than the commonly used indium tin oxide. Furthermore, silver layers possess higher transmittance and lower haze than gold and aluminum ones, while the nanowire configuration overperforms the nanoporous one. The obtained results offer a means for deeper analysis of metallic nanopatterned transparent electrodes for many near-infrared optoelectronic applications.

55.1: Invited Paper: Thin Metallic Nano‐Patterned Transparent Electrodes for Optoelectronic Applications

“…In turn, AgNP has slightly smaller superiority: the transmittance is up to 82% and 82% in the visible and nearinfrared ranges, respectively. It is important to note, that other metals such as gold and aluminum can also be used as TEs with comparable optoelectronic performance [4]. The following results and discussion are made for AgNW layer for simplicity as they are similar to AgNP ones.…”

“…Figure 1 shows the ITO, AgNW and AgNP simulation models. For more information about simulation details please take a look at our previous works [2][3][4].…”

“…Among potential candidates (graphene, polymers and zinc oxide e.t.c.) metallic nano-patterned layers demonstrate a large potential to replace the ITO TE [1][2][3][4]. In addition to low fabrication cost, flexibility and stretchability, they surpass the optoelectronic performance of ITO.…”