Silver Meshes for Record-Performance Transparent Electromagnetic Interference Shielding

We present a simulation and experimental study of silver meshes to determine their performance for transparent electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding. Simulations were employed to study the effects of the silver mesh's width, pitch, and thickness on EMI shielding efficiency (SE) in the 8-18 GHz frequency range and transparency in the visible spectrum. We demonstrate a scalable, facile fabrication method that involves embedding meshes in glass by etching trenches in glass and filling and curing reactive particle-free silver ink in these trenches. Our silver meshes achieve 58.4 dB EMI SE with 83% visible light transmission and 48.3 dB EMI SE with 90.3% visible transmission. The combination of high-conductivity silver, small widths (1.3 to 5 μm), and large thicknesses (0.5 to 2.0 μm) enables the best performance of metal meshes as well as single-sided shielding materials for transparent EMI shielding, as reported in the literature.