Synthesis of Ultrathin Copper Nanowires Using Tris(trimethylsilyl)silane for High-Performance and Low-Haze Transparent Conductors.
Colloidal metal nanowire based transparent conductors are excellent candidates to replace indium-tin-oxide (ITO) owing to their outstanding balance between transparency and conductivity, flexibility, and solution-processability. Copper stands out as a promising material candidate due to its high intrinsic conductivity and earth abundance. Here, we report a new synthetic approach, using tris(trimethylsilyl)silane as a mild reducing reagent, for synthesizing high-quality, ultrathin, and monodispersed copper nanowires, with an average diameter of 17.5 nm and a mean length of 17 μm. A study of the growth mechanism using high-resolution transmission electron microscopy reveals that the copper nanowires adopt a five-fold twinned structure and evolve from decahedral nanoseeds. Fabricated transparent conducting films exhibit excellent transparency and conductivity. An additional advantage of our nanowire transparent conductors is highlighted through reduced optical haze factors (forward light scattering) due to the small nanowire diameter.
Department of Chemistry, University of California , Berkeley, California 94720, United States.|California Research Alliance (CARA), BASF Corporation , Berkeley, California 94720, United States.|Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , Berkeley, California 94720, United States.
Fan
F
Cui
Department of Chemistry, University of California , Berkeley, California 94720, United States.|Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , Berkeley, California 94720, United States.
Yi
Y
Yu
Department of Chemistry, University of California , Berkeley, California 94720, United States.|California Research Alliance (CARA), BASF Corporation , Berkeley, California 94720, United States.|Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , Berkeley, California 94720, United States.
Letian
L
Dou
Department of Chemistry, University of California , Berkeley, California 94720, United States.|Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , Berkeley, California 94720, United States.
Jianwei
J
Sun
Department of Chemistry, University of California , Berkeley, California 94720, United States.
Qin
Q
Yang
California Research Alliance (CARA), BASF Corporation , Berkeley, California 94720, United States.
Christian
C
Schildknecht
California Research Alliance (CARA), BASF Corporation , Berkeley, California 94720, United States.
Kerstin
K
Schierle-Arndt
Department of Chemistry, University of California , Berkeley, California 94720, United States.|California Research Alliance (CARA), BASF Corporation , Berkeley, California 94720, United States.|Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , Berkeley, California 94720, United States.|Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , Berkeley, California 94720, United States.|Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California , Berkeley, California 94720, United States.
Peidong
P
Yang
Ultrathin copper nanowires; growth mechanism; reduced haze; transparent conductor; tris(trimethylsilyl)silane