Electrodeposition of Long Silver Nanowires in Highly Ordered Polymer-Based Template

Template synthesis of silver nanowires is studied in this paper. Unlike previous studies, highly ordered polymer-based template fabricated by nanoimprinting lithography was used instead of porous polycarbonate (PC) and anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) templates. This new template combines the advantages of the traditional templates and overcomes their drawbacks at the same time. Electrodeposition was carried out under different overpotential and time periods. Long single silver nanowires were found in the templates. The average length of the nanowires was much shorter than the length of the template, which can be explained by difficulty of plating solution diffusion. Wettability of the template and how to increase channel filling rate were also discussed in this paper.