Wat­son Devel­ops and Scales up Sil­ver Nanowire (Agnw)

• Opti­cal Appli­ca­tions : solar, med­ical imag­ing, sur­face enhanced spec­troscopy, opti­cal limiters
• Con­duc­tive Appli­ca­tions : high-inten­si­ty LEDs‚ touch­screens‚ con­duc­tive adhe­sives‚ sensors
• Antimi­cro­bial Appli­ca­tions : air & water purifi­ca­tion‚ ban­dages‚ films‚ food preser­va­tion‚ clothing
• Chem­i­cal & Ther­mal : cat­a­lysts‚ pastes‚ con­duc­tive adhe­sives‚ poly­mers, chem­i­cal vapor sensors

Syn­the­sis of sil­ver nanowires can be car­ried out using a num­ber of chem­i­cal meth­ods. Some of them are list­ed below :

• Poly­ol method – Sil­ver nanowires are pro­duced using an aque­ous sol­vent in an auto­clave at 120° C for 8h.
• Rapid syn­the­sis – Sil­ver nanowires are pre­pared by mix­ing polyvinyl pyrroli­done and cop­per chlo­ride in dis­pos­able glass vials. In this method, eth­yl­ene gly­col is used as a pre­cur­sor to the reduc­ing agent.
• Tem­plate method – This method employs supramol­e­c­u­lar nan­otubes of amphiphilic cya­nine dye in aque­ous solu­tion as chem­i­cal­ly active tem­plates for the for­ma­tion of sil­ver nanowires.
• Elec­tro­less depo­si­tion –Sil­ver nanowires are formed by the elec­tro­less depo­si­tion of sil­ver into the poly­car­bon­ate mem­branes through met­al ampli­fi­ca­tion process.

Sil­ver nanowire (Agnw) is poised to become an essen­tial com­po­nent of today’s most advanced tech­nolo­gies. Why ? To begin with, sil­ver nanowires do their job bet­ter than com­pet­ing mate­ri­als boast­ing high trans­mis­sion rates and low resis­tance. This com­bi­na­tion enables 10-fin­ger touch, brighter dis­plays, and longer bat­tery life — all crit­i­cal ele­ments in improv­ing the user expe­ri­ence. Sec­ond, the cost of sil­ver nanowire is low in com­par­i­son to oth­er sim­i­lar mate­ri­als. Sil­ver is a plen­ti­ful mate­r­i­al, man­u­fac­tur­ing is inex­pen­sive, and mass pro­duc­tion is far from being an issue. Last­ly, sil­ver nanowires are infi­nite­ly flex­i­ble mak­ing them very ver­sa­tile. Thin and curved is in wear­ables, kiosks, solar pan­els, gam­ing machines, point-of-sale devices, auto­mo­bile dis­plays, and GPS sys­tems, all of these tech­nolo­gies can ben­e­fit from being thin­ner and more flex­i­ble with the help of sil­ver nanowire.