Yoonkap Kim1,Han-Jung Kim1
Gumi Electronics & Information Technology Research Institute1
Yoonkap Kim1,Han-Jung Kim1
Gumi Electronics & Information Technology Research Institute1
Transparent heaters (THs) have been researched with indium tin oxide (ITO) and fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) for defrosting and defogging windows, outdoor display panels, and self-heated sensors. However, there is limitation with the ITO and FTO to adapt to flexible and wearable heaters due to their brittleness. Hence, in this study, we proposed a transparent flexible heater (TFH) with copper (Cu) mesh structures fabricated onto poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) substrate, which can be dissolved in water, with transfer printing method. The transparent flexible heater exhibited an optical transmittance of ~86% at 550 nm, and reached to ~110 °C with applied voltage of 3V DC. In addition, the thermal response time of the TFH accelerated with a decrease in the thickness of the PVA substrate. In this case, the Cu mesh/PVA-based TFH with a thickness of approximately 75 µm showed fast and effective Joule heating characteristics at a low input voltage (3V DC). Therefore, we expect that the transparent electrode on the PVA substrates considered suitable to develop eco-friendly next-generation electronic devices such as flexible printed circuit boards (PCB) and heater-sensor platforms, flexible actuators and so on.