Scientists from the Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions at JINR, the Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, the Centre of Crystallography and Photonics of RAS, and Moscow State Pedagogical University offered an innovative method for fabricating a thin-film polymer heating element with embedded continuous silver nanowires network. The resulting flexible heating element can be utilised in medical devices for heating purposes or as a thermal barrier coating.

This study presents a method for engineering a film-based heating element using a polymer material with an embedded array of intersecting conductive elements. Track-etched membranes (TM) with a thickness of 10 μm were used as the template, and their pores were filled with metal, forming a three-dimensional grid. Due to the unique manufacturing process of TM, the pores inside intersect with each other, allowing for contacts between individual nanowires (NWs) when filled with metal.

The experiment’s results demonstrated that filling the TM pores with silver allows for temperatures up to 78 degrees without deformation or damage to the heating element.

Nanotechnology published an article about this study. Among the authors is head of the FLNR Centre of Applied Physics Pavel Apel.