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Highly conductive ink made of silver nanopolyhedrons through an ecofriendly solution process

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Abstract

An ecofriendly process has been successfully developed to synthesize the polycrystalline silver nanopolyhedrons with a high yield at large scale. By using tannic acid in the presence of poly (vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVP), high quality silver nanopolyhedrons were obtained in an aqueous one-pot reaction without any templates or auxiliaries. The film made from the silver nanostructures exhibits an electrical conductivity higher than 104 S/cm on both rigid and flexible substrates. The supreme mechanical strength of this silver film recommends its wide application in printing and flexible electronics.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are deeply grateful to the Ministry of Science and Technology (973 Program 2009CB623601, 2009CB623604, 2009CB930604, 2006CB921602, and 863 Program 2008AA03A311) for their financial support.

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Correspondence to Jian Wang or Jian Pei.

Appendix: Materials and Methods

Appendix: Materials and Methods

Silver nitrate (analytical grade, Tianjin Fuchen Chemical Reagent Co., Ltd., Tianjin, China), polyvinylpyrrolidone (analytical grade, Shanghai Bio Life Science & Technology Co., Ltd., Shanghai, China; weight average molecular weight Mw = 55 000 g/mol), and tannic acid (analytical grade, Tianjin Qilun Chemistry Co., Ltd., Tianjin, China) were used without further purification. Deionized (DI) water was used for the entire synthesis. Ethanol (analytical grade, Guangzhou Reagent Co., Ltd., Guangzhou, China), acetone (analytical grade, Guangdong Guanghua Chemical Factory Co., Ltd., Shantou, China), and triethylene glycol monoethyl ether (analytical grade, Shanghai Jingchun Reagent Co., Ltd., Shanghai, China) were used as received. SEM and energy disperse spectroscopy were performed on a Hitachi S-3700 scanning electron microscope (Tokyo, Japan) operating at 15 kV. TEM were recorded on a Philips model Tecnai F20 electron microscope (Amsterdam, The Netherlands) operating at 200 kV. Powder x-ray diffraction was recorded on a D/max-RA high power rotating anode 12 kW x-ray diffractometer (Guangzhou, China). The conductivity of silver films was measured by a four point probe electrical measurement station (Kunde, KDY-1). By assuming that the drop cast silver films with typical thickness 670–900 nm were ideal plane thin films, the classic equation \(\rho = \left({{\pi \over {\ln 2}}} \right)d{V \over I} = 4.5324d{V \over I}\) was used to determine the resistivities. For detailed derivation of the equation, please check Schroder, D. K., Semiconductor Material and Device Characterization, 2nd ed. (John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1998). The bending experiments were performed on a precision displacement instrument (Zolix, TSA400-B, Beijing, China). The microscopic images were taken by a Nikon microscope (eclipse E600 POL, Tokyo, Japan) coupled with a DXM1200F digital camera (Tokyo, Japan). The thickness of the silver films was measured by a Dektak 150 surface profiler (New York, NY), and averaged over 10 films.

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Zheng, H., Yuan, J., Wang, L. et al. Highly conductive ink made of silver nanopolyhedrons through an ecofriendly solution process. Journal of Materials Research 26, 503–507 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2010.95

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2010.95

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