Self-Assembled Nanoparticle Anti-Glare Coatings for Glass Substrates

Self-Assembled Nanoparticle Anti-glare Coatings for Glass Substrates

Anti-reflection coatings (ARC's) are widely used in photovoltaic and many other optoelectronic applications. A large variety of techniques currently exist in fabricating ARC's, but unfortunately many of them suffer from being very expensive or time consuming. Here we introduce a novel self-assembled method to fabricate ARC's on glass substrates. Both sides of the substrates are easily coated with a closely packed monolayer of silica nanoparticles using electrostatic forces. The coatings produced were extremely uniform and had a minimum reflection less than 1% for a broad range of visible and near-infrared wavelengths. This method is simple and scalable that lowers reflection less than 1% which is highly promising for applications ranging from highly efficient solar cells and photo detectors to flat panel displays.