High-performance, bare silver nanowire network transparent heaters.

Silver nanowire (Ag NW) networks are one of the most promising candidates for the replacement of indium tin oxide (ITO) thin films in many different applications. Recently, Ag-NW-based transparent heaters (THs) showed excellent heating performance. In order to overcome the instability issues of Ag NW networks, researchers have offered different hybrid structures. However, these approaches not only require extra processing, but also decrease the optical performance of Ag NW networks. So, it is important to investigate and determine the thermal performance limits of bare-Ag-NW-network-based THs. Herein, we report on the effect of NW density, contact geometry, applied bias, flexing and incremental bias application on the TH performance of Ag NW networks. Ag-NW-network-based THs with a sheet resistance and percentage transmittance of 4.3 Ω sq(-1) and 83.3%, respectively, and a NW density of 1.6 NW μm(-2) reached a maximum temperature of 275 °C under incremental bias application (5 V maximum). With this performance, our results provide a different perspective on bare-Ag-NW-network-based transparent heaters.