A one-step synthesis of ultra-long silver nanowires with ultra-high aspect ratio above 2000 and its application in Flexible Transparent Conductive Electrodes.

Silver nanowires (AgNWs), appear as an extremely promising candidate for the next generation of Flexible Transparent Conductive Electrodes (FTCEs). However, the performance of AgNWs-FTCEs was severely limited by the aspect ratio of AgNWs, while it was still a big challenge to fabricate AgNWs with high aspect ratio nowadays. To improve the aspect ratio of AgNWs, bromide ion (Br-), cupric ion (Cu2+) and polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP, Mw ≈1300000) which are beneficial to synthesis high aspect ratio AgNWs had been introduced in this article, the high quality and uniform AgNWs with the average diameter of 77.6 nm and the aspect ratio above 2000 had been fabricated via a one-step solvothermal method. The effects of reaction time, molar ratio of AgNO3 to PVP and the concentration of CuBr2 on the aspect ratio of AgNWs were discussed. The mechanism of synthesis high aspect ratio AgNWs was explored. After that the prepared AgNWs was spin-coated on the surface of PET film, the FTCEs based on the ultra-high aspect ratio AgNWs without any post-treatments exhibits relatively high transmittance, low haze and low sheet resistance, and the AgNWs have little effect on the optical performance of pristine PET film. The outstanding performance of the prepared FTCEs indicated that the ultra-high aspect ratio AgNWs are ideal materials in the application of FTCEs, and the method of fabricating AgNWs could provide a direction to the high aspect ratio AgNWs.