Optical and Electrical Properties of Nanostructured Metallic Electrical Contacts

TL;DR

This study investigates how nanostructured silver films' optical and electrical properties vary with thickness, revealing resonances and hotspots near the percolation threshold, and optimizing their use as transparent electrical contacts.

Contribution

It introduces an efficient recursive method to analyze the dielectric function and electric fields in nanostructured metallic films, highlighting the impact of topology on optical and electrical behavior.

Findings

Maximum transmittance of 0.41 achieved at optimal thickness.

Large ohmic losses occur near the percolation threshold due to hotspots.

Optimized silver films improve electroluminescent device performance.

Abstract

We study the optical and electrical properties of silver films with a graded thickness obtained through metallic evaporation in vacuum on a tilted substrate to evaluate their use as semitransparent electrical contacts. We measure their ellipsometric coefficients, optical transmissions and electrical conductivity for different widths, and we employ an efficient recursive method to calculate their macroscopic dielectric function, their optical properties and their microscopic electric fields. The topology of very thin films corresponds to disconnected islands, while very wide films are simply connected. For intermediate widths the film becomes semicontinuous, multiply connected, and its microscopic electric field develops hotspots at optical resonances which appear near the percolation threshold of the conducting phase, yielding large ohmic losses that increase the absorptance above that of a corresponding homogeneous film. Optimizing the thickness of the film to maximize its transmittance above the percolation threshold of the conductive phase we obtained a film with transmittance T = 0.41 and a sheet resistance $R_{\square}^{\mathrm{max}}\approx2.7\Omega$. We also analyze the observed emission frequency shift of porous silicon electroluminescent devices when Ag films are used as solid electrical contacts in replacement of electrolytic ones.