Facile synthesis of oxidation-resistant copper nanowires toward solution-processable, flexible, foldable, and free-standing electrodes

Solution-processable, flexible, foldable and free-standing electrodes have been great interests in the development of next generation electronic devices with high electrical conductivity, and flexibility, foldability and free-standing ability. For advanced applications, such as smart clothes, wearable devices, and patchable medical devices, various materials for flexible, foldable or free-standing electrodes have been proposed. In synthetic process of Cu NWs, the reaction conditions of the molar ratio of capping agents and nucleation rate are the significant factors as a guiding role in structures of Cu. Particularly, the capping agents of bromide preferentially adsorbed on the plane of metal NPs to change the morphology. As the structure-induced factors, they effectively guided the ions to form the decahedron shaped seeds, and further be growth to the wire shaped Cu.