April 28th 2015- Séminaire LMGP - Mélanie Lagrange - Silver nanowire-based transparent electrodes: study of physical properties and application in transparent heaters

Abstract

Transparent conducting materials (TCM) are critical in different applications such as solar cells, transparent heaters or touch screens. Recently, new TCM have emerged in order to overcome some drawbacks that existing materials, such as transparent conducting oxides, can present. For example brittleness and high cost. Among these new materials, metallic nanowire networks, and more especially silver nanowires (AgNW), have been seen to be promising. They exhibit excellent optical and electrical properties, and can be integrated into flexible devices. In this seminar will be presented the steps to optimize AgNW network properties: finding the optimized density to allow the best combination of electrical conduction and optical transparency, finding the best way to anneal the network for improving the electrical conduction, and choosing the relevant nanowire dimensions. More fundamental issues will be addressed such as thermal instability. Finally, the use of AgNW networks as transparent heaters will be demonstrated.