Electron beam irradiated silver nanowires for a highly transparent heater

Transparent heaters have attracted increasing attention for their usefulness in vehicle windows, outdoor displays, and periscopes. We present high performance transparent heaters based on Ag nanowires with electron beam irradiation. We obtained an Ag-nanowire thin film with 48 ohm/sq of sheet resistance and 88.8% (substrate included) transmittance at 550 nm after electron beam irradiation for 120 sec. We demonstrate that the electron beam creates nano-soldering at the junctions of the Ag nanowires, which produces lower sheet resistance and improved adhesion of the Ag nanowires. We fabricated a transparent heater with Ag nanowires after electron beam irradiation, and obtained a temperature of 51 °C within 1 min at an applied voltage of 7 V. The presented technique will be useful in a wide range of applications for transparent heaters.