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Transparent heaters (TH) have attracted intense attention from both scientific and industrial sectors due to the key role they play in many technologies, including smart windows, deicers, defoggers, displays, actuators, and sensors. While transparent conductive oxides have dominated the field for the past five decades, a new generation of THs based on nanomaterials has led to new paradigms in terms of applications and prospects in the past years. Here, the most recent developments and strategies to improve the properties, stability, and integration of these new THs are reviewed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

he sun protection factor (SPF) is the most important quantity to characterize the performance of sunscreens. As the standard method for its determination is based on clinical trials involving irradiation of human volunteers, calculations of sunscreen performance have become quite popular to reduce the number of in vivo studies. Such simulations imply the calculation of UV transmittance of the sunscreen film using the amounts and spectroscopic properties of the UV absorbers employed, and presuppose the validity of the Beer-Lambert law. As sunscreen films on human skin can contain considerable concentrations of UV absorbers, it is questioned whether the Beer-Lambert law is still valid for these systems. The results of this work show that the validity of the Beer-Lambert law is still given at the high concentrations at which UV absorbers occur in sunscreen films on human skin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) is a transparent conductive polymer widely used in flexible photonic and optoelectronic devices because of its excellent electrical and optical properties. However, its current range of applications is limited by its poor stability under high humidity and solar radiations. Encapsulation is an attractive solution to this problem and the development of a low-temperature and scalable deposition method is highly desirable. In this study, we report the use of spatial atomic layer deposition (SALD) to deposit ultrathin layers of ZnO, TiO 2 , and Al 2 O 3. These nanolayers maintain the electrical performance of the conductive polymer and its high optical transmittance. The use of SALD ensures low-cost and flexible processing with pinhole-free high-quality coatings at atmospheric pressure and high-throughput. The present study is the first to investigate the effect of various multilayer metal oxide encapsulations on the long-term stability of PEDOT-based transparent conductive materials under solar radiations. We demonstrate finally that bilayer TiO 2 /Al 2 O 3 and TiO 2 /ZnO coatings preserve the optoelectronic properties of three different PEDOT-based films, namely PEDOT:OTf (OTf = triflate), PEDOT:Sulf (Sulf = sulfate)and PEDOT:PSS (PSS = PolyStyreneSulfonate) films. [Display omitted] • PEDOT materials are encapsulated using spatial atomic layer deposition. • Deposition of nanolayers is an efficient method to preserve the electrical performances of highly conductive PEDOT. • Bilayer structures TiO 2 /ZnO and TiO 2 /Al 2 O 3 lead to the most effective protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]