Ultrathin-metal-film-based transparent electrodes with relative transmittance surpassing 100.

Abstract

Flexible transparent electrodes are in significant demand in applications including solar cells, light-emitting diodes, and touch panels. The combination of high optical transparency and high electrical conductivity, however, sets a stringent requirement on electrodes based on metallic materials. To obtain practical sheet resistances, the visible transmittance of the electrodes in previous studies is typically lower than the transparent substrates the electrode structures are built on, namely, the transmittance relative to the substrate is <100%. Here, we demonstrate a flexible dielectric-metal-dielectric-based electrode with ~88.4% absolute transmittance, even higher than the ~88.1% transmittance of the polymer substrate, which results in a relative transmittance of ~100.3%. This non-trivial performance is achieved by leveraging an optimized dielectric-metal-dielectric structure guided by analytical and quantitative principles described in this work, and is attributed to an ultra-thin and ultra-smooth copper-doped silver film with low optical loss and low sheet resistance.