Synthesis of uniform silver nanowires from AgCl seeds for transparent conductive films via spin-coating at variable spin-speed

Abstract Uniform silver nanowires (AgNWs) with high aspect ratio are significant to fabricate high-performance transparent conductive films (TCFs). In this work, AgNWs were synthesized through polyol method using AgCl as seeds. The growth mechanism of AgNWs upon AgCl particles was demonstrated, which provided a clear understanding of heterogeneous nucleation for synthesizing crystal. The amounts and the reaction time of AgCl were discussed to probe the effect on morphology of final AgNWs. Apart from that, the temperature was also tuned to provide appropriate thermal energy for synthesis of AgNWs. Uniform AgNWs with thin diameter about 52 nm and aspect ratio above 1000 were synthesized by optimizing the amounts, reaction time of AgCl and the temperature. These AgNWs were utilized to fabricate TCFs firstly through spin-coating at a variable speed. The resulting films coated at variable spin-speed largely improved the performance of films compared with those of films coated at constant spin-speed, exhibiting a low sheet resistance of 54 Ω sq−1 and high transmittance of 92% at 550 nm with haze of 5.4%.