Wet Chemical Synthesis of Silver Nanowires Based on a Soft Template of Cholesteryl Pyridine Carbamate Organogel

We synthesized a chiral gelator, cholesteryl-pyridine-carbamate (CPC), which formed the gel containing long nanotubes in a mixture of water and anisole. These stable nanotubes were utilized as soft templates for a one-step synthesis of long silver nanowires with diameters of 20-70 nm and lengths up to 100 mu m via the classic silver mirror reaction. A number of analyses indicated that the optimal control of external stimuli, such as initial silver ion concentrations, mixed ratios of aqueous reaction solution to the gel and silver ion reduction rate, played crucial roles in the growth of silver nanowires. On the basis of the experimental analyses, a possible mechanism is proposed.