Highly flexible and transparent film heaters based on colorless polyimide substrate with a GZO/AgNW/GZO sandwich structure

In the past years, transparent film heaters (TFHs) based on silver nanowires (AgNWs) have attracted much attention because of their high transmittance, excellent flexibility, and great thermal response. In this paper, we fabricated flexible TFHs with a sandwich structure composed of Ga-doped ZnO (GZO) and AgNWs on the colorless polyimide (cPI) substrate. The optimized hybrid film exhibited a sheet resistance of 14.6 Ω sq −1 with a transmittance of 79%. Excellent thermal uniformity and heating stability of TFHs were demonstrated. The thermal response tests of the GZO/AgNW/GZO/cPI TFHs showed high saturation temperature (~ 176 ℃) with low input voltage (~ 6 V), fast response time (~ 15 s), and stable heating performance. These results indicate that the flexible TFHs with a GZO/AgNW/GZO sandwich structure have broad potential applications in flexible electronic devices.