Synthesis of mace silver nanorod with particles and water-alcohol room-temperature-curing UV conductive ink

Abstract

At present, the silver nanorods of UV conductive ink have the problems of easy agglomeration of silver nanorods, and slow curing speed. In this paper, firstly mace-like silver nanorods with inorganic particles were synthesized by using polycarbonate fibers as soft-templates, AgNO3 as silver source. The diameters and lengths of silver nanorods were 0.25–0.35 μm and 2.1–5.1 μm. There are many wolf-tooth particles (0.20–0.35 μm) on the silver nanorods which prevented the silver nanorods from reuniting. The obtained silver nanorods were not easy to agglomerate. The minimum resistance value of the coating could reach 1∼10Ω. Secondly, a kind of water-alcohol UV conductive ink with low heat treatment temperature (140 °C), fast drying and curing speed and water-alcohol system was prepared. Water-alcohol soluble P(AA-r-HEMA)-g-GMA was used as the prepolymer, glycidyl triethylenetetraamine hexamethacrylate (TGMA) was used as the monomer, and 907 and ITX were used as photoinitiators. The effects of the types and contents of different photoinitiators (907:1%–5%, ITX: 0.2 %∼1 %), species and contents of prepolymer (30 %∼50 %), the number and content of monomers with different functional groups (30 %∼50 %) on the UV-curing rate were studied. The curing rate was the fastest when the mass fraction of photoinitiator ITX was 0.4 %, the mass fraction of the prepolymer with 30 % GMA content was 50 % and the mass fraction of monomer TGMA was 50 %. The curing speed can reach 2–3 s, and the ink film surface was smooth without bubbles. At last, UV conductive ink was prepared by using the obtained water-alcohol UV curing system as the bonding material and mace-like silver nanorods as the conductive filler. The influence of heat treatment temperature and time on the conductive properties of the coating was explored. The optimal heat treatment temperature was 140 °C, and the heat treatment time was 30 min.