An eco-friendly water-assisted polyol method to enhance the aspect ratio of silver nanowires

Abstract

With water as an eco-friendly heterogeneous nucleation accelerator, silver nanowires (Ag NWs) have been successfully prepared with a high aspect ratio (>1600). The Ag NW-based film exhibits a low sheet resistance of 8.1 Ω sq^-1 with a transparency of 81.9% at 550 nm, showing the potential application of electrode materials in polymer solar cells.

Fig. 1. (a and b) SEM images of Ag NWs made by 2 vol% water-assisted polyol method. The inset histogram showed the statistical distribution of length and diameter. (c and d) SEM images of Ag NWs using the same recipe without water.

Fig. 2. (a) UV-Vis and (b) XRD patterns of the Ag NWs obtained by different polyol process.

Fig. 3. SEM images of the products by (a) 1 vol%, (b) 4 vol% water added with AgCl and (c) 2 vol% water added with AgNO₃.

Fig. 4. (a) The schematic structure of the inverted OSCs with printed Ag NWs electrodes, (b) the comparison of J–V curves between devices with different Ag NWs top electrode.