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Self-assembled monolayer modulated Plateau-Rayleigh instability and enhanced chemical stability of silver nanowire for invisibly patterned, stable transparent electrodes

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Abstract

Patterned silver nanowire (AgNW) networks have been widely used as transparent electrodes in many optoelectrical devices. However, obvious patterning visibility and poor thermostability of AgNW are still limiting its practical application. Herein, we report self-assembled monolayer (SAM) modulated Plateau-Rayleigh instability (PRI) of AgNW, which allows invisible patterning and superior stability of the AgNW network. Two opposite effects of different SAMs on the PRI are identified: the alkanethiol SAMs activate surface atom diffusion while the mercaptobenzoheterocyclic (MBH) SAMs suppress the diffusion. The degradation temperature of the AgNWs can be therefore, for the first time, tuned in the range of 193–381 °C, so that the AgNW network can be patterned via PRI with a tiny optical difference between the insulative and conductive regions, i.e., patterning invisible. Besides, the MBH SAMs provide AgNW with excellent durability under thermal annealing and oxidation, which enhances the maximum heating temperature of the AgNW transparent heater by over 120 °C. Beyond the micro-patterning, we consider that the developed SAM strategy can be extended to other metal nanowires for stability improvement and has huge potential in nanoengineering of one-dimensional metal materials.

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Acknowledgements

The work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 61904067, 62175094, 61805108, and 62075088), Science and Technology Projects in Guangzhou (No. 202102020758), Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (No. 2020A1515011498), Scientific and Technological Projection of Guangdong province (No. 2020B1212060030), Key-Area Research and Development Program of Guangdong Province (No. 2019B010934001), and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Nos. 21621405 and 21620328). We thank M.S. Yuwang Xu for valuable discussion.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Optical Fiber Sensing and Communications, Key Laboratory of Visible Light Communications of Guangzhou, Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Information and Sensing Technologies of Guangdong Higher Education Institutes, Department of Optoelectronic Engineering, Jinan University, Guangzhou, 510632, China

    Gui-Shi Liu, Huajian Zheng, Zijie Zeng, Yexiong Wang, Weidong Guo, Heng Chen, Yunsen Chen, Shiqi Hu, Lei Chen, Yaofei Chen & Yunhan Luo

  2. Siyuan Laboratory, Guangzhou Key Laboratory of Vacuum Coating Technologies and New Energy Materials, Department of Physics, Jinan University, Guangzhou, 510632, China

    Weiguang Xie

  3. State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies, School of Electronics and Information Technology, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510006, China

    Ting Wang & Bo-Ru Yang

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  1. Gui-Shi Liu
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Correspondence to Bo-Ru Yang or Yunhan Luo.

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Self-assembled monolayer modulated Plateau-Rayleigh instability and enhanced chemical stability of silver nanowire for invisibly patterned, stable transparent electrodes

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Liu, GS., Zheng, H., Zeng, Z. et al. Self-assembled monolayer modulated Plateau-Rayleigh instability and enhanced chemical stability of silver nanowire for invisibly patterned, stable transparent electrodes. Nano Res. 15, 4552–4562 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-4042-3

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