School of Advanced Materials Science and Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU), Suwon 16419, South Korea.
Nanoscale. 2018 Jul 5;10(25):12087-12092. doi: 10.1039/c8nr02242a.
Silver (Ag) nanowires (NWs) are promising building blocks for flexible transparent electrodes, which are key components in fabricating soft electronic devices such as flexible organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs). Typically, Ag NWs have been synthesized using a polyol method, but it still remains a challenge to produce high-aspect-ratio Ag NWs via a simple and rapid process. In this work, we developed a modified polyol method and newly found that the addition of propylene glycol to ethylene glycol-based polyol synthesis facilitated the growth of Ag NWs, allowing the rapid production of long Ag NWs with high aspect ratios of about 2000 in a high yield (∼90%) within 5 min. Transparent electrodes fabricated with our Ag NWs exhibited performance comparable to that of an indium tin oxide-based electrode. With these Ag NWs, we successfully demonstrated the fabrication of a large-area flexible OLED with dimensions of 30 cm × 15 cm using a roll-to-roll process.
银（Ag）纳米线（NWs）是用于制造柔性透明电极的有前途的构建块，而透明电极是制造软电子设备（如柔性有机发光二极管（OLED））的关键组件。通常，Ag NWs 是使用多元醇法合成的，但是通过简单快速的工艺生产高纵横比的 Ag NWs 仍然是一个挑战。在这项工作中，我们开发了一种改良的多元醇法，并新发现向基于乙二醇的多元醇合成中添加丙二醇有助于 Ag NWs 的生长，从而能够在 5 分钟内以高产率（约 90％）快速生产出具有约 2000 的高纵横比的长 Ag NWs。用我们的 Ag NWs 制造的透明电极表现出与基于铟锡氧化物的电极相当的性能。使用这些 Ag NWs，我们成功地使用卷对卷工艺展示了尺寸为 30 cm×15 cm 的大面积柔性 OLED 的制造。
