Preparation of silver nanowires and their application in conducting polymer nanocomposites

Silver nanowires (AgNWs)/conducting polymers based nanocomposites are advanced materials for electrical conductive applications. AgNWs have high electrical conductivity, high surface area and high aspect ratio, which are important for the preparation of AgNWs/conducting polymer nanocomposites by using particularly small amounts of AgNWs as conductive filler. The resultant nanocomposite transparent conductive electrodes play a key role in many optoelectronic devices such as touch screen, liquid crystal display, and solar cell. Thus, we carefully selected such published data which is associated with AgNWs/conducting polymers based nanocomposites. This paper gives a comprehensive review on recent development in the synthetic techniques of AgNWs, factors affecting the growth of AgNWs and their applications in conducting polymer nanocomposites. In addition, the effect of various additives (inorganic anions, transition metal cations and molecular species) on size, shape and aspect ratio (length:diameter) of AgNWs has been described in detail. Herein, we also focused on various thin film deposition techniques, for the surface modification of AgNWs with conducting polymers for useful applications such as in touch screen, liquid crystal display and solar cell.