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Ultrathin and transparent metal films are considered as desirable materials to substitute indium-tin oxide based transparent electrodes. In this work, we report that an Al-doped ZnO layer effectively induced the formation of epitaxial ultrathin and ultrasmooth Au films on mica. The ultrathin Au film shows optimum electrical conductivity, optical properties, and high tolerance to mechanical bending, including a low sheet resistance of 8 Ω/sq and a high average transmittance of 80.1%, and maintains low electric resistivity even after 1000 continuous bending cycles. Moreover, the Au/AZO anode-based organic light-emitting diode was fabricated with the maximum luminance intensity of 32 540 cd/cm2, which demonstrates that it is promising for application in next generation optoelectronic devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, high-performance conducting Al-doped ZnO (AZO) electrodes were deposited on transparent and flexible muscovite mica substrates. The use of mica as a substrate material makes a van der Waals epitaxy possible, which significantly improves the structural, electrical, and optical properties of deposited AZO single-crystal-like films. AZO/mica retains its low electric resistivity, even after continuous bending of up to 1000 times on account of the unique layered structure of mica. When used as a transparent heater, AZO/mica shows an ultrahigh heating rate (200 °C/s) across large areas, which is a record among flexible transparent heaters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]