Crack-Templated Wire-Like Semitransparent Electrodes with Unique Irregular Patterns

The development of novel methods of producing transparent electrodes is important because of their ever-evolving applications and thus the additional parameters they must meet. In this work, we present a method of manufacturing semitransparent silver electrodes. This technique involves cracking the polyvinylpyrrolidone layer in the presence of a colloidal nanodispersion of zinc oxide. The resulting cracked polymer layer serves as the disposable mask for metal deposition. The whole procedure is valuable due to the fast and easy step of cracks formation caused by the elevated temperature and reduced pressure. The obtained electrodes have high transparency (82.4%) in a wide spectral range, which is only limited by the transparency of the applied substrate, and low resistivity (27.3 × 10^-7 Ωm). The presence of unique patterns suggests new ideas for the applications of such electrodes, such as coding, security, and antiplagiarism protection.