Self-assembled monolayer modulated Plateau-Rayleigh instability and enhanced chemical stability of silver nanowire for invisibly patterned, stable transparent electrodes

Patterned silver nanowire (AgNW) networks have been widely used as transparent electrodes in many optoelectrical devices. However, obvious patterning visibility and poor thermostability of AgNW are still limiting its practical application. Herein, we report self-assembled monolayer (SAM) modulated Plateau-Rayleigh instability (PRI) of AgNW, which allows invisible patterning and superior stability of the AgNW network. Two opposite effects of different SAMs on the PRI are identified: the alkanethiol SAMs activate surface atom diffusion while the mercaptobenzoheterocyclic (MBH) SAMs suppress the diffusion. The degradation temperature of the AgNWs can be therefore, for the first time, tuned in the range of 193–381 °C, so that the AgNW network can be patterned via PRI with a tiny optical difference between the insulative and conductive regions, i.e., patterning invisible. Besides, the MBH SAMs provide AgNW with excellent durability under thermal annealing and oxidation, which enhances the maximum heating temperature of the AgNW transparent heater by over 120 °C. Beyond the micro-patterning, we consider that the developed SAM strategy can be extended to other metal nanowires for stability improvement and has huge potential in nanoengineering of one-dimensional metal materials.