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An interesting, flexible, transparent electrode heater can be employed for a number of applications, including defrosting car mirrors and heating some body parts. The study from the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) has built the first electronic device from a metallic glass. Its disordered structure works contrary to the "organized crystalline structure" of standard metals.

Even though metallic glasses have been in existence since the 1960s, the new glass device has attractive commercial properties, such as "flexibility, stability, and transparency", according to HNGN.

"We think that the ductile properties of metallic glasses are well-suited for stretchable, transparent electrodes and heaters," Jang-Ung Park, co-author of the study, told Phys.org.

The team first took a metallic glass made of copper-zirconium alloy, and then created a web of two metals after inserting them into a polymer web scaffold. The metal web network that it obtained could then be shifted to a flexible substrate and employed as an electrode.

To use the electrode as a heater, the scientists blended the metallic web into a silicone material (PDMS) and plugged it to a power source. The heating pad rose to touch temperatures of 180 degrees Celsius even as it got stretched more than one and a half times the "original length and maintaining resistance".

Scientists designed a wireless control for its temperature, underlining its usage for thermotherapy.

They aim to explore the benefits of metallic glasses for further transparent and stretchable technology.

The findings were published in the Dec.15,2015 issue of Nano Letters.