The Alignment of Silver Nanowires Under the Influence of Surfactant

Silver nanowires are conventional material to make a thin sheet of conducting layer. There are many ways to process the nanowires, but the coat-and-dry is perhaps the most common technique. However, the evaporation of complex fluid usually accompanies the emergence of strong internal flow effect, which sometimes changes the deposition pattern. In this study, we report the spontaneous patterning of silver nanowires when the solution of silver nanowire includes surfactant. We simply coat a substrate with a solution of mixture of silver nanowire, surfactant, and water, and we let it dry by heating the substrate. Our visual inspection reveals that the dried pattern may be anisotropic depending on the surfactant concentration.