Recently, Professor Qian Kai's Team at the School of Microelectronics of Shandong University published a research paper entitled “Universal assembly of ordered Ag nanowire micromesh conductors on arbitrary substrates by manipulating the contact angle” in Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 2023, 11, 6440–6451. PhD Sun Bowen is the first author. Professor Qian Kai is the corresponding author. Shandong University is the first author institution and the corresponding author institution.

Figure 1 (a) Ag NMs formation on the target substrate surface with Ag NWs/ethanol ink. (b) Ag NMs formation on the target substrate surface with Ag NWs/water ink.

It is desirable in many optoelectronics applications to obtain Ag nanowire (Ag NW) conductors with remarkable electrical homogeneity and thermal stability by uniformly depositing nanowires to reduce local hot spots. To address these issues, we carefully investigated the boundary conditions for Ag NWs micromesh formation on arbitrary substrates. It is found that the instantaneous water contact angles required ~56.7° to ~147.2° for Ag NWs/water ink and ~55° to ~160.6° for Ag NWs/ethanol ink to construct Ag NMs conductor on solid substrates (Figure 1), respectively. This fundamental understanding guided us to provide a versatile strategy for Ag NMs formation on arbitrary substrates (e.g., glass slide, A4 paper, silicon wafer, wooden board, petal, leaf, and curved glass beaker) by tuning the contact angles, where the solvents can be water, IPA, ethanol, and methanol for Ag NWs inks.

Figure 2 (a-i) Schematic of the multi-layered chameleon pattern with 3 different thermochromic pigments on flexible Ag NMs/PET heater surface. (j-n) Anticounterfeiting and encryption demonstrations with QR code evolution on the Ag NMs/glass heater surface and scanning results under different applied voltages. Scale bar, 1cm.

The intuitive color changes depending on the temperature not only to provide more functionality in electronics but also to increase the possibility of applications such as anticounterfeiting for information security and biomimetic field of artificial camouflage for the military, art, architecture, and outdoor activities. Combined with the high-performance active thermal control system of Ag NWs heater and thermochromic pigments, a chameleon model and an encrypted QR code of “Shandong University”(Figure 2) were implemented for artificial camouflage and information security development.

Link to the article:https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2023/ta/d3ta00086a

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