The samples’ optical transparency was characterized by a Perkin Elmer Lambda 950 UV-Visible-NIR spectrophotometer (PerkinElmer, Waltham, MA, USA) with an integrating sphere in order to measure their total transmittance from 250 to 2500 nm. When “without substrate contribution” has been mentioned in this work, it means that the total transmittance has been divided by the value of the glass substrate.
The AgNW morphologies were analyzed with a field-emission gun scanning electron microscopy (FEG-SEM Zeiss Gemini 300, Carl Zeiss Microscopy GmbH, Oberkochen, Germany), using an accelerating voltage of 3 keV. The areal mass density (amd), which corresponds to the silver mass per unit of the surface, was estimated with the “Ridge detection” plugin of the ImageJ computer program (NIH, Bethesda, MD, USA). Ten SEM images were captured in order to get an average value of the amd for each studied network. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images were obtained with a JEM-2010 TEM (JEOL Ltd., Tokyo, Japan), operating at 200 kV, with a resolution of 0.19 nm. AgNWs with ZnO or SnO2 coatings were directly deposited on carbon-coated copper grids for TEM observations. The thicknesses of the ZnO and SnO2 coatings surrounding the AgNWs was measured using 10 TEM images for each oxide.
The AgNW morphologies were analyzed with a field-emission gun scanning electron microscopy (FEG-SEM Zeiss Gemini 300, Carl Zeiss Microscopy GmbH, Oberkochen, Germany), using an accelerating voltage of 3 keV. The areal mass density (amd), which corresponds to the silver mass per unit of the surface, was estimated with the “Ridge detection” plugin of the ImageJ computer program (NIH, Bethesda, MD, USA). Ten SEM images were captured in order to get an average value of the amd for each studied network. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images were obtained with a JEM-2010 TEM (JEOL Ltd., Tokyo, Japan), operating at 200 kV, with a resolution of 0.19 nm. AgNWs with ZnO or SnO2 coatings were directly deposited on carbon-coated copper grids for TEM observations. The thicknesses of the ZnO and SnO2 coatings surrounding the AgNWs was measured using 10 TEM images for each oxide.