Microchannel Wetting for Controllable Patterning and Alignment of Silver Nanowire with High Resolution.
Patterning and alignment of conductive nanowires are essential for good electrical isolation and high conductivity in various applications. Herein a facile bottom-up, additive technique is developed to pattern and align silver nanowires (AgNWs) by manipulating wetting of dispersions in microchannels. By forming hydrophobic/hydrophilic micropatterns down to 8 μm with fluoropolymer (Cytop) and SiO2, the aqueous AgNW dispersions with the optimized surface tension and viscosity self-assemble into microdroplets and then dry to form anisotropic AgNW networks. The alignment degree characterized by the full width at half-maximum (FWHM) can be well-controlled from 39.8° to 84.1° by changing the width of microchannels. A mechanism is proposed and validated by statistical analysis on AgNW alignment, and a static model is proposed to guide the patterning of general NWs. The alignment reduced well the electrical resistivity of AgNW networks by a factor of 5 because of the formation of efficient percolation path for carrier conduction.
School of Microelectronics, School of Physics and Engineering, Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Display Material and Technology, State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies, Sun Yat-Sen University , Guangzhou 510275, People's Republic of China.|SYSU-CMU Shunde International Joint Research Institute , Shunde 528000, People's Republic of China.
Bo-Ru
BR
Yang
School of Microelectronics, School of Physics and Engineering, Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Display Material and Technology, State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies, Sun Yat-Sen University , Guangzhou 510275, People's Republic of China.
Wu
W
Cao
School of Microelectronics, School of Physics and Engineering, Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Display Material and Technology, State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies, Sun Yat-Sen University , Guangzhou 510275, People's Republic of China.
Gui-Shi
GS
Liu
SYSU-CMU Shunde International Joint Research Institute , Shunde 528000, People's Republic of China.
Hui-Jiuan
HJ
Chen
Department of Energy and Materials Engineering, Dongguk University , 26 Pil-dong, 3 ga, Jung-gu, Seoul 100-715, Republic of Korea.
Yong-Young
YY
Noh
International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (WPI-MANA), National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) , Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0044, Japan.
Takeo
T
Minari
Shenzhen China Star Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd. , Guangming New District No. 9-2, Tangming Road, Shenzhen 518132, People's Republic of China.
Hsiang-Chih
HC
Hsiao
Shenzhen China Star Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd. , Guangming New District No. 9-2, Tangming Road, Shenzhen 518132, People's Republic of China.
Chia-Yu
CY
Lee
Department of Photonics/Display Institute, National Chiao Tung University , Hsinchu 300, Taiwan.
Han-Ping D
HP
Shieh
School of Microelectronics, School of Physics and Engineering, Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Display Material and Technology, State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies, Sun Yat-Sen University , Guangzhou 510275, People's Republic of China.|SYSU-CMU Shunde International Joint Research Institute , Shunde 528000, People's Republic of China.
Chuan
C
Liu
alignment; fluoropolymer; microchannel; self-assembly patterning; silver nanowires