Effect of Starting Materials of CuO

To dissolve well copper salts and alkali hydroxide, which are ionic compounds, polar solvents are commonly used for synthesizing CuO nanostructures. Water is undoubtedly the cheapest, safest, and most environmentally friendly solvent. In most of the reports, CuO nanostructures were prepared using water as a solvent; however, there are only a few reports of using water without any additives or surfactants. Preparation of nanostructures in water without additives typically leads to significant (several hundreds of nanometers) and nonuniform size and shape particles or complex structures like 3D flower-like structures. These results imply that water has disadvantages that make scientists prefer using other organic solvents, such as alcohols of different carbon chain lengths or several functional groups (OH). The main disadvantage of using water as a solvent is that water promotes the coarsening process during the growth of nanostructures prepared from the liquid phase. Coarsening involves the development of larger crystals at the expense of smaller crystals and is governed by capillary effects. Since the chemical potential of particles increases with decreasing particle size, the equilibrium solute concentration for small particles is much higher than that for large particles, or, in other words, larger particles are more energetically favored than smaller particles. The resulting concentration gradients lead to the transport of solute from the small particles to the larger particles. In addition, the polarity of water is also more favorable for the formation of large agglomerated clusters. The idea that the polarity of solvent can alter the morphology of nanoparticles was reported theoretically and experimentally by the group of Leekumjorn. Their report showed that solvent polarity correlates better with the simulation and experimental results than other parameters, such as dielectric constant or dipole moment. Computational results showed that the nonpolar solvents of hexane, toluene, and benzene kept oleate-capped nanoparticles in suspension and solvated the oleate chains so that the oleate layer swelled to full extension. If you are looking for high quality, high purity, and cost-effective Copper Oxide, or if you require the latest price of Copper Oxide, please feel free to email contact mis-asia.