High yield preparation of silver nanowires by CuCl2-mediated polyol method and application in semitransparent conduction electrode

High yield preparation of silver nanowires (AgNWs) was prepared by polyol method. In this developed polyol process, uniform AgNWs have been successfully synthesized at higher yield by introducing CuCl2·2H2O, when ethylene glycol is used as the solvent and reductant while poly vinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) is used as the capper agent. Then Ag thin films were made by screen printing using silver nanowires and nanoparticles as semitransparent conduction electrodes. The test results indicated that the electrical resistivity could be as low as 0.091 Ω/□, when the transparence rate can reach 45–46%, which shows great promise in the improvement of conductive antireflection coating.