Making transparent metals based on scattering cancellations

It is highly desirable to make a metal film transparent for light, owing to many application requests for transparent metals in optoelectronics devices such as solar cells. Extraordinary optical transmission (EOT) is one of the mechanisms to make an opaque metal transparent, but it typically requires the metallic film to be perforated with subwavelength openings such as holes [1] or slits [2]. In addition, to achieve a high transmission, strict periodicity is required for the opening array perforated on the metal film, which adds substantial fabrication difficulties. Based on theoretical analysis and full-wave simulations, we proposed a scheme [3] to make a continuous metal film transparent in optical regime, with light scattered from the metal film canceled by those from two composite layers consisting of metallic and dielectric stripes. Such a transparency does not sacrifice the conductivity of the target metal and is robust against incidence angle as well as structural disorder. As a proof of concept, we performed microwave experiments to verify all theoretical predictions.