Substrateless Welding of Self-Assembled Silver Nanowires at Air/Water Interface

Integrating connected silver nanowire networks with flexible polymers has appeared as a popular way to prepare flexible electronics. To reduce the contact resistance and enhance the connectivity between silver nanowires, various welding techniques have been developed. Herein, rather than welding on solid supporting substrates, which often requires complicated transferring operations and also may pose damage to heat-sensitive substrates, we report an alternative approach to prepare easily transferrable conductive networks through welding of self-assembled silver nanowires at the air/water interface using plasmonic heating. The intriguing welding behavior of partially aligned silver nanowires was analyzed with combined experimental observation and theoretical modeling. The underlying water not only physically supports the assembled silver nanowires but also buffers potential overheating during the welding process, thereby enabling effective welding within a broad range of illumination power density and illumination duration. The welded networks could be directly integrated with PDMS substrates to prepare high-performance stable flexible heaters that are stretchable, bendable, and can be easily patterned to explore selective heating applications.