A material layer whose thickness is small relative to its lateral extent. Initial surface nucleation and later growth on the deposited material can obey different chemical conditions.
Liquid outflow from a narrowing film between nearby surfaces or droplets. viscosity, pressure gradients, surface mobility and intermolecular forces affect its rate and possible rupture.
Deposition in which material travels approximately ballistically from a source to the substrate. Shadowing produces poor coverage of hidden surfaces; gas mean free path must substantially exceed the relevant source-substrate path.
Transfer of liquid from patterned recesses in a printing surface onto a substrate. It can repeatedly coat or pattern a moving flexible web. Ink rheology, cell filling, transfer, wetting and drying determine resolution and film uniformity.
Metered delivery of a liquid film from a slot onto a moving substrate. It can support continuous web production, but uniform wet-film thickness, ink rheology, drying, substrate wetting and particle orientation affect the final coating.
A conducting coating or patterned network designed to transmit a specified optical band while carrying current. Its transmittance, sheet resistance, thickness, optical haze, substrate reference, pattern geometry and mechanical durability must be specified together. A material name alone does not establish that every processed film meets a device specification.
Formation of a sample-spanning conducting path in a network of metal wires. Connectivity depends on wire number density, aspect ratio, orientation and the sample's finite dimensions; resistance also depends on the quality and number of wire junctions. A barely spanning network can have poor reliability even when individual wire resistivity is low.
Electrical resistance associated with transfer between intersecting nanowires. Contact geometry, adsorbed ligand and oxide layers, welding and pressure affect it. Reducing nanowire junction resistance can improve a transparent network's sheet resistance without increasing its metal coverage.
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A thin film is a layer of material ranging from fractions of a nanometer to several micrometers in thickness. Thin films can be composed of various materials, including metals, semiconductors, insulators, and polymers. They are often deposited onto substrates (like glass, silicon, or metals) using various techniques, such as physical vapor deposition (PVD), chemical vapor deposition (CVD), sputtering, and spin coating.