title: Substrateless Welding of Self-Assembled Silver Nanowires at Air/Water Interface.
abstract: Integrating connected silver nanowire networks with flexible polymers has appeared as a popular way to prepare flexible electronics. To reduce the contact resistance and enhance the connectivity between silver nanowires, various welding techniques have been developed. Herein, rather than welding on solid supporting substrates, which often requires complicated transferring operations and also may pose damage to heat-sensitive substrates, we report an alternative approach to prepare easily transferrable conductive networks through welding of self-assembled silver nanowires at the air/water interface using plasmonic heating. The intriguing welding behavior of partially aligned silver nanowires was analyzed with combined experimental observation and theoretical modeling. The underlying water not only physically supports the assembled silver nanowires but also buffers potential overheating during the welding process, thereby enabling effective welding within a broad range of illumination power density and illumination duration. The welded networks could be directly integrated with PDMS substrates to prepare high-performance stable flexible heaters that are stretchable, bendable, and can be easily patterned to explore selective heating applications.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Metal Matrix Composites, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University , Shanghai 200240, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Hang
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Metal Matrix Composites, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University , Shanghai 200240, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Zhongyong
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Metal Matrix Composites, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University , Shanghai 200240, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Qinxian
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Ye
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Metal Matrix Composites, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University , Shanghai 200240, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Jiaqing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: He
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Metal Matrix Composites, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University , Shanghai 200240, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Xiao
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Nie
authors.affiliation: School of Electronic Information and Electrical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University , Shanghai 200240, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Gufeng
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: He
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Metal Matrix Composites, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University , Shanghai 200240, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Chengyi
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Song
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Metal Matrix Composites, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University , Shanghai 200240, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Wen
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Shang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Metal Matrix Composites, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University , Shanghai 200240, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Jianbo
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Metal Matrix Composites, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University , Shanghai 200240, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Peng
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Tao
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Metal Matrix Composites, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University , Shanghai 200240, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Tao
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Deng
keywords: interfacial self-assembly; plasmonic heating; silver nanowire; stretchable heater; welding