NU 2007-057
Inventors
Dmitry Dikin
SonBinh Nguyen*
Rodney Ruoff
Sasha Stankovich
Abstract
Northwestern researchers have developed new glass technology that is electrically conducive and may be used in a range of applications including solar reflecting glass, self-cleaning windows, electrostatic charge-dissipating coatings, solar cells and sensor devices. Conductive glasses are typically prepared by metal oxide film coating using complex and expensive operations, such as magnetron sputtering or chemical vapor deposition. The investigators have identified a simple solution-based route to fabricate stable electrically conductive thin films. By incorporating graphene into a silica matrix, they create a conductive inorganic thin film on silicon substrates. Graphite oxide (GO), exfoliated in aqueous medium, is suspended in a silicon sol-gel, spin-coated on glass or hydrophilic SiOx/silicon substrates, chemically reduced and dried to a stable conductive and transparent thin film. With 11 wt% loading, the thin film exhibits ~20 nm thickness and ~12vÖ roughness after 400 ¬8C curing and comparable conductivity to graphene loading. While the incorporation of graphene produces a slight reduction in transparency, it still maintains high transparency (~0.95) between 380-1000 nm wavelengths.
Applications
Advantages
Publication
Watcharotone S, Dikin D, Stankovich S, Piner R, Jung I, Dommett G, Evmenenko G, Wu S, Chen S, Liu C, Nguyen B, Ruoff R (2007) Graphene-Silica Composite Thin Films as Transparent Conductors. NANO Letters. 7: 1888-1892.
IP Status
Issued US Patent No. 8,574,681