Direct Blow Spinning of Flexible and Transparent Ag Nanofiber Heater

Fog and frost formation cause many issues such as influencing building interior daylighting of architectural aesthetics or causing traffic accidents in cold weather. Transparent flexible heaters (TFHs) play a vital role in defogging smart windows. Herein, the rapid and facile fabrication of uniform, flexible, and large-scale TFHs based on percolation networks of Ag nanofiber (AgNF) is reported using blow-spinning method followed with room-temperature UV reduction. The TFHs exhibit excellent optical and electrical properties with a high transmittance of ≈95% and low sheet resistance of ≈16 Ω sq⁻¹. The TFHs based on AgNFs also present excellent mechanical flexibility and remain steady after 1000 cycles of bending. Furthermore, the saturation temperature of AgNF/cPI (colorless polyimide) electrode-based TFHs (9.5 Ω sq⁻¹) reaches more than 285 °C at a DC voltage of 10 V, more effective than those of tin-doped indium oxide (ITO)-based TFHs (55 Ω sq⁻¹) about 150 °C at the same transmittance of visible light (88%). The flexible AgNFs-based heater demonstrates excellent heating performance, as well as reliable chemical and mechanical durability in defogging smart windows of vehicles or buildings.