Ultrasonic-assisted synthesis and characterization of semiconductor CuO nanoparticles via decomposition of ethanedioate precursor
Semiconductor cupric oxide nanoparticles are of great interest due to their numerous applications in many important fields of science and technology such as pigments, semiconductors, sensors, catalysts and solar cells. In this work, nanoparticles of semiconductor cupric oxide with an average size of 52 nm have been successfully synthesized via ultrasonic-assisted thermal decomposition of the ethanedioate precursor at 400 °C. The nanoparticles were characterized by powderX-ray diffraction (XRD), FT-IR spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), colorimetric analysis (L*a*b* color parameters), diffuse reflectance spectroscopy and UV-Vis spectroscopy. Our results confirmed the formation of the pure single-phase monoclinic cupric oxide (space group C2/c) with the monoclinic structure. The FT-IR spectrum displays the typical vibration of cupric oxide at 536 cm-1. Also the optical absorption spectrum indicates that the cupric oxide nanoparticles have a direct band gap of 1.95 eV,which is larger than the reported value for the bulk cupric oxide (1.85 eV).