Waste-free self-organized process manufacturing transparent conductive mesh and microflakes in closed cycle for broadband electromagnetic shielding and heater application

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-024-14121-y

Developing new environmentally friendly methods of producing materials for electronics is critical important task for material science. Manufacturing process of semiconductor materials, transparent electrodes, electrical and thermal conductive pastes, fillers for conductive inks and some other materials should be improved from environmental point of view. Here we present a waste-free closed cycle fabrication of two important materials for electronics based on the concept of a self-organized cracked template. Optically transparent silver meshes and silver microflakes were obtained in waste-free manufacturing cycle. The morphological, structural, optoelectric, and shielding properties of transparent silver meshes and silver microflakes films were studied in detail. Also, we made transparent heater in close manufacturing cycle. The first type of materials are transparent silver meshes with irregular structure that have a transparency of more than 80% in visible range and with a shielding efficiency of more than 40 dB in the S and L bands and about 30 dB in the K and K_a bands. The second type of material is silver microflakes. We produced solid films using vacuum filtration with our silver microflakes. These films have a shielding efficiency of 90.1 dB with a thickness of 6.2 ± 1.2 μm in the K and K_a bands. A detailed analysis of the shielding properties showed that both types of the obtained shielding materials are comparable to the best literature results in shielding efficiency and are significantly lower in cost than analogs. We show silver mesh transparent heater with contact pads based on self-made conductive pastes filled with silver microflakes. Self-made conductive paste has a low resistivity of 5.26 ± 1.13 µΩ∙m. Optically transparent heaters obtained in a waste-free closed cycle demonstrate uniform temperature field distribution and high heating efficiency. Our results show a new approach for creating materials for electronics and this is significant addition for this emerging industry.