Silver nanowires (AgNWs) show promise for fabricating flexible transparent conductors owing to their excellent conductivity, high transparency, and good mechanical properties. Here, we present the fabrication of transparent films composed of AgNWs with diameters of 20–30 nm and lengths of 25–30 μm on polyethylene terephthalate substrates and glass slides substrates using the Meyer rod method. We systematically investigated the films’ optoelectronic and electrothermal properties. The morphology remained intact when heated at 25–150 °C and the AgNWs film showed high conductivity (17.6–14.3 Ω∙sq⁻¹), excellent transmittance (93.9–91.8%) and low surface roughness values (11.2–14.7 nm). When used as a heater, the transparent AgNW conductive film showed rapid heating at low input voltages owing to a uniform heat distribution across the whole substrate surface. Additionally, the conductivity of the film decreased with increasing bending cycle numbers; however, the film still exhibited a good conductivity and heating performances after repeated bending.

Low cost electronics implemented in textiles could pave the way to a fully new generation of smart products in the fields of healthcare, sport, fashion, and safety. Although many methods have found their way into the market, many problems still need to be solved and much progress has to be made to enable the commercial exploitation of such products. In this paper, silver nanowires of 60–100 nm in diameter and 8–15 μm in length were achieved by the polyol solvothermal method, and aqueous silver nanowire conductive inks were prepared with the synthesized silver nanowires as the conductive phase, in the presence of polyaniline, guar, and hydrochloric acid. The conductive inks were printed on cotton fabric substrate by screen printing process. The effects of the amount of silver nanowires, layers of coating, and treatment temperature on the microstructure and electrical properties of samples were investigated by scanning electron microscopy and the four-point probe method. The results show that the conductivity and densification of the samples increased with increased amount of silver nanowires, layers of coating, and treatment temperature. The heat treatment helped to improve densification of the silver nanowires and conductivity of the sample. The resistance of the samples increased after bending due to loosening of the overlap between the silver nanowires.

We synthesized silver nanowires (AgNWs) with a mean diameter of about 120 nm and 20–70 μm in length using a polyol process. The flexible transparent conductive AgNWs films were prepared using the vacuum filtration-transferring process, in which random AgNWs networks were transferred to a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate after being deposited on mixed cellulose esters (MCEs). Furthermore, the photoelectric and mechanical properties of the AgNWs films were studied. The scanning electron microscopy images show that the AgNWs randomly, uniformly distribute on the surface of the PET substrate, which indicates that the AgNWs structure was preserved well after the transfer process. The film with 81% transmittance at 550 nm and sheet resistance about 130 Ω·sq⁻¹ can be obtained. It is sufficient to be used as a flexible transparent conductive film. However, the results of the bending test and tape test show that the adhesion of AgNWs and PET substrate is poor, because the sheet resistance of film increases during the bending test and tape test. The 0.06 W LED lamp with a series fixed on the surface of the AgNWs-PET electrode with conductive adhesive was luminous, and it was still luminous after bent.

Flexible transparent conductive films (FTCFs) composed of silver nanowires (AgNWs) have become an important research direction because of their potential in flexible electronic devices. The optoelectronic properties of FTCFs composed of AgNWs of different lengths were evaluated in this study. AgNWs, with an average diameter of about 25 nm and length of 15.49–3.92 μm were obtained by a sonication-induced scission process. AgNW-FTCFs were prepared on polyethylene terephthalate substrates using a Meyer bar and then dried in the ambient environment. The sheet resistance, non-uniformity factor of the sheet resistance, the root mean square roughness, and haze of the FTCFs increased as the length of AgNWs decreased. The transmittance of the films increased slightly as the length of AgNWs increased. AgNWs with a length of 15.49 μm provided an AgNW-FTCF with excellent properties including haze of 0.95%, transmittance of 93.42%, and sheet resistance of 80.15 Ω∙sq⁻¹, without any additional post-treatment of the film. This work investigating the dependence of the optoelectronic properties of AgNW-FTCFs on AgNW length provides design guidelines for development of AgNW-FTCFs.

We report a fabrication method of the conductive pattern based on in situ reactive silver precursor inks by inkjet printing. The reactive silver precursor inks were prepared with ethylene glycol and deionized water mixture as the solvent, and silver nitrate as silver source. Sodium borohydride solution as the reducing agent was first coated on photographic paper by screen printing process, and then dried at 50 °C for 4 h. Furthermore, the reactive silver precursor inks were printed on a photographic paper coated with sodium borohydride using inkjet printing to form silver nanoparticles in situ due to redox reaction, and thus a conductive pattern was obtained. The effects of the reactive silver precursor ink concentration and printing layer number and treatment temperature on the electrical properties and microstructures of the printed patterns were investigated systematically. The size range of in situ-formed silver nanoparticles was 50–90 nm. When the reactive silver precursor ink concentration was 0.13 g/mL, the five-layer printed pattern exhibited a sheet resistance of 4.6 Ω/γ after drying at room temperature for 2 h; furthermore, the sheet resistance of the printed pattern decreased to 1.4 Ω/γ after drying at 130 °C for 2 h. In addition, the display function circuit was printed on the photographic paper to realize the display of the numbers 0–99. It provides new research ideas for the development of environmentally friendly and low-cost flexible paper-based circuits.

Silver nanowires (AgNWs) have inspired many research interests due to their better properties in optical, electric, and flexible applications. One such exploitable use is as the electrical conductive fillers for print electronics. In this paper, AgNWs with mean a diameter of 80 nm and mean length of 13.49 μm were synthesized using the polyol solvothermal method. A sonication-induced scission process was used to obtain AgNWs with a length range of 7.64–11.21 μm. Further AgNWs inks were prepared with the as-synthesized AgNWs as conductive fillers in anhydrous ethanol. The conductive inks were coated on resin coated photographic paper substrate using the knife coating process and dried at room temperature. The effects of the number of layers of AgNWs coating, the concentration of AgNWs, and the length of AgNWs on the microstructure and electrical properties of samples were investigated by scanning electron microscopy and using the four-point probe method. The results show that the conductivity of the AgNWs coating increases with the increase in the number of layers in the AgNWs coating, concentration and length of the AgNWs.