Michigan : Jay Guo, U-M professor of electrical engineering and computer science and his team from the University of Michigan’s College of Engineering North Campus have developed plastic conductive, using an anti-reflection coating while also making it more transparent. This, in turn, helps in improving:-
- Large touchscreens
- LED light panels
- Window-mounted infrared solar cells
As compared to glass, light transmission in plastic is less but its transparency can be improved with ant-reflection coatings.
"We developed a way to make coatings with high transparency and conductivity, low haze, excellent flexibility, easy fabrication and great compatibility with different surfaces," said Jay Guo, U-M professor of electrical engineering and computer science, who led the work.
Initially, the team had used a thin layer of silver that was added onto the plastic sheet which helped to reduce light by roughly 10%.
Guo and his colleague Dong Liu, a visiting professor at U-M from Nanjing University of Science and Technology, realized that they could make an anti-reflection coating that was also conductive.
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"It was taken for granted that the transmittance of the conductor is lower than that of the substrate, but we show that this is not the case," said Chengang Ji, first author of the study in Nature Communications, who worked on the project as a Ph.D. student in electrical and computer engineering. Ji received his doctorate from U-M in 2019.
The conductive metal layer is sandwiched between two "dielectric" materials (in this case, are aluminum oxide and zinc oxide) that allow light to pass through easily. The dielectrics reduce the reflection from both the plastic and metal layer between them.
The tricks are selecting the right dielectrics and then figuring out the right thickness for each to suppress the reflection of the thin metal. In general, the material between the plastic and metal should have a higher refractive index, while the material nearest the display or light source should have a lower refractive index.
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With the theory results, the team anticipates that other researchers will be able to design similar sandwich-style flexible, highly transparent conductors, which allow even more light through than the plastic alone.
"We tell people how transparent a dielectric-metal-dielectric conductor could be, for a target electrical conductance. We also tell them how to achieve this high transmittance step-by-step," Liu said.
Guo is continuing to move the technology forward, collaborating on a project that uses transparent conductors in solar cells for mounting on windows. These could absorb infrared light and convert it to electricity while leaving the visible spectrum to brighten the room. He also proposes large panel interactive displays and car windshields that can melt ice the way rear windows can.
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