Geometric model of crack-templated networks for transparent conductive films

TL;DR

This paper presents a geometric modeling approach to predict optical and electrical properties of crack-templated networks, aiding the design of transparent conductive films with disordered structures.

Contribution

It introduces a novel geometric simulation method for crack networks and analyzes their optoelectronic properties, bridging the gap between structure and performance prediction.

Findings

Model accurately predicts wavelength- and angle-dependent transmittance.

Disordered crack networks can achieve properties comparable to ordered metallic meshes.

Simulation results align with experimental data, validating the approach.

Abstract

Crack-templated networks, metallic frameworks fabricated from crack patterns in sacrificial thin films, can exhibit high optical transmittance, high electric conductivity, and a host of other properties attractive for applications. Despite advances in preparing, characterizing, and analyzing optoelectronic performance of cracked template networks, limited efforts have focused on predicting how their disordered structures help determine their electrical and optical properties and explain their interrelationships. We introduce a geometric modeling approach for crack-templated networks and use simulation to compute their wavelength- and incident angle-dependent optical transmittance and sheet resistivity. We explore how these properties relate to one another and to those of metallic meshes with periodically ordered aperture arrays. We consider implications of the results for optoelectronic applications, compare figure-of-merit predictions to experimental data, and highlight an opportunity to extend the modeling approach using inverse methods.