Synthesis of Core-shell Copper nanowire with Reducible Copper Lactate Shell and its Application

We present the concept of reducible fugitive material that conformally surrounds core Cu nanowire (NW) to fabricate transparent conducting electrode (TCE). Reducing atmosphere can corrodes/erodes the underlying/surrounding layers and might cause undesirable reactions such impurity doing and contamination, so that hydrogen-/forming gas based annealing is impractical to make device. In this regards, we introduce novel reducible shell conformally surrounding indivial CuNW to provide a protection against the oxidation when exposed to both air and solvent. Uniform copper lactate shell formation is readily achievable by injecting lactic acid to the CuNW dispersion as the acid reacts with the surface oxide/hydroxide or pure copper. Cu lactate shell prevents the core CuNW from the oxidation during the storage and/or film formation, so that the core-shell CuNW maintains without signficant oxidation for long time. Upon simple thermal annealing under vacuum or in nitrogen atmosphere, the Cu lactate shell is easily decomposed to pure Cu, providing an effective way to produce pure CuNW network TCE with typically sheet resistance of $19.8{\Omega}/sq$ and optical transmittance of 85.5% at 550 nm. Our reducible copper lactate core-shell Cu nanowires have the great advantage in fabrication of device such as composite transparent electrodes or solar cells.