Large-Scale Synthesis of Uniform Silver Nanowires Through a Soft, Self-Seeding, Polyol Process

A self-seeding process is used to generate bicrystalline silver nanowires by reducing AgNO3 with ethylene glycol at ∼160 °C. The key to the success of this solution-phase approach is the use of a polymeric "coordination reagent" capable of controlling the growth rates of different faces of silver. Uniform nanowires (see Figure) could be routinely synthesized with diameters of ∼60 nm and lengths up to ∼50 μm.