The researchers based the new process on a combination of two existing techniques. Using the stamping technique ‘Substrate Conformal Imprint Lithography’, which originates from a collaboration between Philips and AMOLF, they stamped a pattern in a thin layer of plastic on top of a glass substrate. The result looks much like a nanoscale landscape: a surface that is crisscrossed with interconnecting channels. The researchers subsequently filled the minuscule channels with silver using a chemical process known as the ‘Tollens’ reaction’. After removing the plastic, a conductive silver grid remains on the glass substrate. The patterns of this conductor are smaller than the wavelength of light; as a result, they do not reflect any colours from the visible spectrum. This property makes the conductor transparent. […] the technique has a conductivity three times as high as a conventional method based on the evaporation of metals
Source: Physicists make transparent conductors by means of stamping and growing
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