A comprehensive study of silver nanowires filled electrically conductive adhesives

Abstract

As one of the most important conductive materials, silver nanowires have recently attracted a lot of attention for potential applications such as electrically conductive adhesives, transparent electrodes, and conductive ink. In this paper, silver nanowires with a diameter of 200–570 nm and a length of 20–100 μm were synthesized by a polyol process. The electrically conductive adhesives (ECAs) composed of an epoxy-based binder containing silver nanowire were prepared and the curing behaviors and electrical properties of ECAs were investigated. The in situ monitoring of the variation in electrical resistance of the ECAs explore that silver nanowires impact on the curing behavior of the ECAs. The resistance of the ECAs filled with 40 wt% silver nanowires reaches to 0.59 Ω heated to 11 min from the room temperature to 164 °C. Silver nanowires significantly improve the electrical conductivity of the ECAs, and the resistivities of the ECAs filled with 35 and 40 wt% silver nanowires is 9.48 × 10−4 and 1.42 × 10−4 Ω cm after cured at 168 °C, respectively. The reasons for the effects of silver nanowires on the curing behavior and the electrical properties were also discussed in terms of the morphology and higher activity of silver nanowires.