Synthesis of Silver Nanowires by Reduction of Silver-Pyridine Complexes

摘要

One-dimensional (1-D) metallic nanostructures, such as wires, rods, and tubes, have unique electrical, optical, and thermal properties, and potential applicability in microelectronics, optoelectronic devices, and sensors. Since silver is the metal with the highest electrical (6.3 x 10~7 S·m~(-1)) and thermal (429 W·m~(-1)·K~(-1)) conductivities, it has been widely used as conductive interfaces in electronics. Silver nanowires are therefore being studied for the next generation of nanoelectronics, solar cells, and sensors. Many methods have been developed to prepare silver nanowires within hard templates, such as anodic aluminum oxide (AAO), carbon nanotubes, and co-polymers. However, the subsequent removal of the templates is difficult. The nanowires' sizes are also limited to the hard templates' pore size. Therefore, wet chemical methods capable of the large-scale production of silver nanowires without hard templates are required. Soft template-assisted methods have been used for the preparation of silver nanowires, with polyvinylpyrrolidone) (PVP) used as a soft template and ethylene glycol used as both a reducing agent and solvent. This work reports a simple interfacial method using cetyl-trimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) as a soft template for fabricating straight and ultra-long silver nanowires with lengths of up to 50 μm and diameters of about 50-300 nm.