Design of three-dimensional metal structures and its applica-tion to soft opto-electronics

Abstract

Transparent electrodes are one of the essential components in modern optoelectronic devices including solar cell, light emitting diode, touch screen panel, and smart windows, all of which are increasing in demand for next generation devices such as flexible, foldable, and stretchable electronics. Indium tin oxide (ITO) are commonly used as transparent electrode due to its excellent optical transmittance and electrical conductance, but mechanical brittleness of these materials on the polymer substrate critically limits to employ them in soft electronics. For this reason, the search for new materials having mechanical stability is the important issue in this research field. Among alternatives, metal networking structures are considered as the most promising material candidate due to its outstanding conductivity of metals and mechanical flexibility of metal networks. In this thesis, new kind of ultra-tall and ultra-thin metal-based architectures are suggested for high performance transparent electrode and their practical application in soft opto-electronics. These unique three-dimensional structures based on second-ary sputtering phenomenon enable the excellent trade-off between the optical transmittance and electrical con-ductance, which leads to outstanding performance of transparent electrode.