Ordering of Disordered Nanowires: Spontaneous Formation of Highly Aligned, Ultralong Ag Nanowire Films at Oil–Water–Air Interface

Abstract

One‐dimensional nanomaterials and their assemblies attract considerable scientific interest in the physical, chemical, and biological fields because of their potential applications in electronic and optical devices. The interface‐assembly method has become an important route for the self‐assembly of nanoparticles, nanosheets, nanotubes, and nanorods, but the self‐assembly of ultralong nanowires has only been successful using the Langmuir–Blodgett approach. A novel approach for the spontaneous formation of highly aligned, ultralong Ag nanowire films at the oil–water–air interface is described. In this approach, the three‐phase interface directs the movement and self‐assembly process of the ultralong Ag nanowires without the effect of an external force or complex apparatus. The ordered films exhibit intrinsic large electromagnetic fields that are localized in the interstitials between adjacent nanowires. This new three‐phase‐interface approach is proven to be a general route that can be extended to self‐assemble other ultralong nanowires and produce ordered films.

Ordering Ag nanowire arrays by a glass capillary: A portable, reusable and durable SERS substrate

“…With significant advancement in 1-D nanomaterials, a wide range of assembly strateges have been developed to create and construct functional well-defined ordered superstructures or complex architectures with desired properties4567. A variety of principles and strategies have been used to assemble nanowires, such as (i) external fields based assembly, in which external field would affect the directional aggregation of nanowire blocks, resulting in the formation of well-aligned structures of magnetic or charged nanowires89, (ii) interface based assembly, in which interfaces offer a significant platform for the organization of nanowire blocks based on interfacial-ordering effects, especially for evaporation induce assembly and Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) technique101112131415161718, and (iii) other assembly methods, such as fluid flow192021, pattern transfer process22, blown bubble23, electrospinning242526, and mechanical force27282930. Compared with the sophisticated manufacturing of macroscopic devices, the assembly and integration of nanoscale objects into nanodevices are far from perfect and major efforts are still needed to further develop nanowire assembly strategies to expand expected potentials313233.…”

High-performance epoxy/silica coated silver nanowire composites as underfill material for electronic packaging

“…3b-d, AgNWs tend to agglomerate and are poorly dispersed in epoxy with high loading. This may be due to the unfavorable interactions between hydrophilic AgNWs and hydrophobic epoxy [34,35]. Also, the high surface energy of AgNWs does not favor well-dispersed epoxy/AgNWs composites.…”

Biogenic and biomimetic magnetic nanosized assemblies

“…For example, the fabrication of silver nanowire films at the oil-water-air interface was reported by Yu and co-workers [121]. Based on the differences of principles, we classify interfacial assembly of magnetic nanomaterials into three types including gas/liquid interface induced procedure (which is also called 'bubble induced procedure'), oil/water interface induced procedure and evaporation-induced assembly.…”