As the advanced functional materials, silver nanoparticles are potentially useful in various fields such as photoelectric, bio-sensing, catalysis, antibacterial and other fields, which are mainly based on their various properties. However, the properties of silver nanoparticles are usually determined by their size, shape, and surrounding medium, which can be modulated by various synthesis methods. In this review, the fabrication methods for synthesizing silver nanoparticles of different shapes and specific size are illustrated in detail. Besides, the corresponding properties and applications of silver nanoparticles are also discussed in this paper.

In this work, a new electron-rich building block, o-fluoro-p-alkoxyphenyl-substituted benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b′]dithiophene (BDT) unit, has been used to construct donor (D)–acceptor (A) conjugated copolymers with electron-deficient units 5,6-difluoro-4,7-di(4-(2-ethylhexyl)-2-thienyl)-2,1,3-benzothiadiazole (C8DTBTff) and 5,6-difluoro-4,7-di(4-hexyl-2-thienyl)-2,1,3-benzothiadiazole (C6DTBTff), named P-o-FBDTP-C8DTBTff (P2) and P-o-FBDTP-C6DTBTff (P3), respectively. The experimental results indicate that the incorporation of fluorine into the ortho-position of the alkoxyphenyl substituted BDT unit can enable its resultant polymer to efficiently tune the energy levels and improve the mobility of the derived bulk heterojunction layer, which results in a much higher power conversion efficiency (PCE) of P2 (8.10%). Moreover, replacing the 2-ethylhexyl chains on the DTBTff unit with hexyl chains can improve the planarity of the conjugated backbone of the polymer, which makes the P3/PC₇₁BM blends exhibit higher carrier mobility than P2/PC₇₁BM. Finally, a PCE of 9.02% for the device of P3 is obtained without any additive treatment, which is the highest value achieved for the widely reported D–A polymers with fluorine substituted BDT as the electron-donor unit in single junction polymer solar cells.

Fabricating polymer solar cells (PSCs) on flexible polymer substrates, instead of on hard glass, is attractive for implementing the advantage and uniqueness of the PSCs represented by mechanically rollable and light-weight natures. However, simultaneously achieving reliable robustness and high-power conversion efficiency (PCE) in such flexible PSCs is still technically challenging due to poor light harvesting of thin photoactive polymers. In this work, we report a facile, effective strategy for improving the light-harvesting performance of flexible PSCs without sacrificing rollability. Very high transparent (93.67% in 400–800 nm) and low sheet resistance (~10 Ω sq⁻¹) ZnO/Ag_(O)/ZnO electrodes were implemented as the flexible substrates. In systematically comparison with ZnO/Ag/ZnO electrodes, small amount of oxygen induced continuous metallic films with lower thickness, which resulted in higher transmittance and lower sheet resistance. To increase the light absorption of thin active layer (maintain the high rollability of active layer), a unique platform simultaneously utilizing both a transparent electrode configuration based on an ultrathin oxygen-doped Ag, Ag_(O), and film and plasmonic Ag@SiO₂ nanoparticles were designed for fully leveraging the advantages of duel microresonant cavity and plasmonic effects to enhance light absorbance in photoactive polymers. A combination of the ZnO/Ag_(O)/ZnO electrode and Ag@SiO₂ nanoparticles significantly increased the short-current density of PSCs to 17.98 mA cm⁻² with enhancing the photoluminescence of PTB7-Th film. The flexible PSC using the optimized configuration provided an average PCE of 8.04% for flexible PSCs, which was increased by 36.27% compared to that of the PSC merely using a conventional transparent indium tin oxide electrode.