Nanopatterned metallic transparent electrodes for the near-infrared spectrum

Abstract

Near-infrared transparent electrodes constitute an essential component of light-emitting and photovoltaic devices widely employed in short-and long-range communication, light detection and ranging, biodiagnostics, security, virtual and augmented reality, night vision, gas sensing,and solar cells. However, the effi ciency of all these devices and related applications suffers from signifi cantly reduced transmittance of the indium tin oxide electrode compared to the visible wavelength range. Here, we explore the potential of randomly and uniformly arranged silver, gold, and aluminum nanopore and nanowire fi lms for the near-infrared optoelectronics. We show that these metallic nanopatterned layers, except for randomly arranged nanoporous confi gurations, exhibit considerably higher performance than the commonly used indiumtin oxide. Furthermore, silver layers possess higher transmittance and lower haze than gold and aluminum ones, while the nanowire configuration overperforms the nanoporous one. The obtained results offer a means for deeper analysis of metallic nanopatterned transparent electrodes for many near-infrared optoelectronic applications.