Lowered melting point of polyvinyl pyrrolidone bound 1D silver nanowires

Silver nanowires are superior material for semitransparent electrode fabrication: with printing on a transparent glass or plastic film, deposited and mutually crossed-over silver nanowire network serves as a good electrical conductor, especially when they are composed of grain-boundary free crystallographic 1D nanowires. The free space among the network serves as transparent portion which light passes through. Combined with the emerging technology of roll-to-roll printing on flexible plastic films, the silver nanowire realizes superior semi-transparent electrodes for flexible large area photovoltaic panels or shock-resistant touch panels for “smart phones” and portable “tablets”. However the lowered melting point, which is inherent to nanostructures, restricts the device fabrication process and need to be addressed. The present study checks the contribution of surface bound polymer catalysts to this nanowire melting point lowering, and tries to remove them by argon plasma processing.