Essay On Copper Oxide Nanomaterial - 763 Words

Studies on copper oxide nanomaterial have grown significantly in recent years due to its direct band gap and intrinsic p-type behavior together with low cost fabrication and good opto-electronic properties. Copper oxide shows two types of polymorphism namely, cuprous oxide (Cu2O) and cupric oxide (CuO) [1]. Cupric oxide has absorbed light up to the near infrared region due to the open 3d shell with a 1.2 eV in bulk, of charge-transfer type [2]. Recently, CuO has been paying attention within the scientific community as a ‘future material’, because it has some unique magnetic and super-hydrophobic properties which are not usually present in other metal oxide nanostructures, such as TiO2, ZnO, WO3, and SnO2 [3]. Additionally, It confirms the†¦show more content†¦It has been reported in the literature that sol-gel method had influence of CuO nanoparticles [8-9]. Basically, sol-gel method is divided into two categories aqueous and non-aqueous sol-gel methods both are beneficial for material preparation with simple laboratory equipment. Also, it gives various morphologies at the synthesis stage (chemical transformation of the molecular precursor into the final oxidic network) [10]. The aqueous sol-gel method has popular to fabricate bulk metal oxides; they have a few limitations, when it works at their nanoscale counterparts. It becomes more complex due to the highly reactive nature of water molecules with metal oxide precursors. In many cases, the three reaction types (hydrolysis, condensation, or aggregation) occur simultaneously (and are difficult to control individually), therefore slight variation in experimental conditions results in the alteration of particle morphologies and is a serious concern regarding the reproducibility of a synthesis [11]. Furthermore, the synthesized metal oxides are often amorphous, and it is difficult to retain full control over the crystallization process. Apart from that the nonaqueous (or nonhydrolytic) sol-g el method in organic solvents without involvement of water molecules is able to defeat some of the major limitations of aqueous method. The advantages are closely related to the diverse role of the organic