Hybrid transparent conducting glasses made of metal nanomesh coated with metal oxide overlayer

Abstract

Industrially relevant conducting glasses come up with conducting coatings such as ITO with few hundred nm of thicknesses, where significant cost is attached to the slow deposition rates adopted for high-quality films. In this work, we have circumvented the issue by making hybrid transparent conducting electrodes consisting of metal mesh on a glass substrate with sputtered thin overlayers of metal oxides (<50–300 nm). The design is attractive as the hybrid electrode possesses excellent conductive property of the metal mesh (sheet resistance, ~5 Ω/square) while offering oxide surface finish for the conductive glass, which makes it relate well with the existing industry requirements based on ITO. By doing so, we have also addressed the issue of non-uniform electric field prevalent in the wire network systems as well as the surface roughness.