High-yield and rapid synthesis of ultrathin silver nanowires for low-haze transparent conductors

Transparent conducting electrodes (TCEs) are essential components in various optoelectronic devices such as solar cells, organic light emitting diodes, liquid crystal displays, touch screens, and smart windows. Nowadays, the most common conductive material used in TCEs is indium tin oxide (ITO). However, poor mechanical exibility, limited supply, high cost, and the vacuum forming process of the ITO layer have become an obstacle for its further development in conductors, together with limitations in future electronics. Several alternative materials have been developed to replace ITO, such as carbon nanotubes (CNTs), conductive polymers, graphene, metal nanowires, and hybrid electrodes. Among them, metal nanowire conductive materials, mainly silver nanowires (Ag NWs) and copper nanowires (Cu NWs), have been widely explored for their promising opto-electrical properties and outstanding mechanical exibility. It is noted that Ag NWs exhibit excellent electrical conductivity, superior electrical, and thermal conductivities compared with other metals. Therefore, Ag NWs are widely considered to be the optimal material for fabricating exible electronics. To synthesize Ag NWs, numerous methods have been employed, such as template wetting and polyol. The polyol method has been recognized as one of the most promising processes to reliably prepare Ag NWs, with the advantage of facile and controllable synthesis, and large-scale manufacturing and low-cost potential, to obtain the high performance Ag NW conductors, tremendous efforts have been made to synthesis uniform Ag NWs with long length and thin diameter. For example, Bergin et al. reported the synthesis of Ag NWs by the polyol method, with a thin diameter of 42 nm. However, the nanowires were very short, with a length of 3 mm. More recently, Kim et al. successfully demonstrated the