Magnetic field assisted assembly of highly ordered percolated nanostructures and their application for transparent conductive thin films

Magnetic field assisted assembly is used to fabricate aligned single nanowire mesh-like nanostructured films. Inhomogeneous magnetic field is applied to translocate high aspect ratio silver nanowires from suspensions to the surface of solid supports. The tangential component of the magnetic field vector is rotated in two consecutive steps to arrange the rectangular mesh-like structure of orthogonally oriented nanowires with minimal fractions of loops and bent structures. This work demonstrates highly ordered nanowire films with superior properties to randomly deposited structures-specifically one order of magnitude greater conductivity and more than ten percent higher transparency. This method is simple, scalable and can be used for the directed assembly of magnetic and nonmagnetic highly ordered, percolated structures.