Researchers from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (California, USA) have recently manufactured monolithic aerogels consisting of silver nanowires (AgNW). The newly devised production technique, consisting of freeze-casting and sintering, facilitates tunable aerogel properties (e.g. bulk densities, pore structure, and conductivity). Due to its electrical conductivity, applications for the new material range from fuel cells to medical devices.
Although the discovered aerogel structures are of an outstanding quality, the researchers are already aiming at enhancing the material features.The researchers hope to further increase the electrical conductivity by reducing the average pore size and nanowire diameter, while at the same time increasing the length of the nanowires. Of course this prospect only boosts the likelihood of finding silver nanowire aerogels in future applications.
More details: Fang Qian et al. Ultralight Conductive Silver Nanowire Aerogels, Nano Letters (2017). DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.7b02790
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-10-ultralight-silver-nanowire-aerogel-boon.html
