Highly flexible and transparent electrodes for high-performance thin-film heaters with nanostructured micromesh Cu-Ag ultrathin films

Herein, we present a facile method to fabricate transparent, flexible, and high-performance thin-film heaters (TTFHs) based on nanostructured micromesh (NSMM) Cu-Ag/indium tin oxide bilayer transparent thin-film electrodes (TTFEs) with both nano- and microstructures. Our approach combines Ar-assisted thermal evaporation and pulsed laser ablation techniques to fabricate NSMM TTFEs with a low sheet resistance (-2.1 omega/sq) and high optical transmittance (-80.1 %). By adjusting the spacing of microholes, we can achieve excellent figure of merit values (-51.8 x 10-3 omega- 1) for the NSMM TTFEs. These electrodes also show excellent durability and flexibility, as evidenced by a resistance change of only 4 %-18 % in cyclic bending tests with up to 200,000 cycles. Finally, we demonstrate that the NSMM TTFEs can be used as high-performance TTFHs with short response times (3.97 s at a steady temperature of 87.5 degrees C under low-voltage operation (5 V)) and infrared shielding properties. Our results suggest that the Cu-Ag-alloy-based NSMM TTFEs are promising transparent electrodes for various applications in flexible electronics, smart windows, and wearable devices.