High figure-of-merit ultrathin metal transparent electrodes incorporating a conductive grid

It is known that ultrathin (< 10 nm) metal films (UTMFs) can achieve high level of optical transparency at the expense of the electrical sheet resistance. In this letter, we propose a design, the incorporation of an ad hoc conductive grid, which can significantly reduce the sheet resistance of UTMF based transparent electrodes, leaving practically unchanged their transparency. The calculated highest figure-of-merit corresponds to a filling factor and a grid spacing-to-linewidth ratio of 0.025 and 39, respectively. To demonstrate the capability of the proposed method the sheet resistance of a continuous 2 nm Ni film (>950 /square) is reduced to similar to 6.5 /square when a 100 nm thick Cu grid is deposited on it. The transparency is instead maintained at values exceeding 75%. These results, which can be further improved by making thicker grids, already demonstrate the potential in applications, such as photovoltaic cells, optical detectors and displays.