Eco Friendly Synthesis, Spectroscopic Investigation of Copper and Its Oxide Nanoparticles with Excellent Electrical Conductivity

Metal Nanoparticles have attracted considerable attention because of their excellent electronic and optical properties. They have been used in many fields, such as displays, solar cells, touchscreens, sensors, and electromagnetic interference shielding [1]. However, for most of these applications, metal Nanoparticles with high electrical conductance are required. Compared with various other metals, copper is more abundant and less expensive, while having favourable mechanical, electrical, and optical properties [2]. Copper Nanoparticles have thus been suggested as a low cost alternative to indium tin oxide (ITO), investigated extensively and compared against conductive polymers, carbon nanotubes, graphenes and Ag nanowires [3-6]. To date, various methods have been developed for synthesizing Copper and its oxide Nanoparticles (CuO NPs), including electrochemical deposition, electrospinning, template processes, hydrothermal reduction and reverse micellar systems [7-12]. On the other hand, the microwave-assisted synthesis [13,14], which is generally quite fast, simple and efficient in energy, has been developed and is widely used in various fields such as molecular sieve preparation, radiopharmaceuticals, the preparation of inorganic complexes and oxide, organic reactions, plasma chemistry, analytical chemistry and catalysis. Generally speaking, the power, heating frequency and on/off irradiation cycles are the main heating parameters of a microwave oven and each of them may have a great effect on the structure and properties of the products. To the best of our knowledge, although such a heating method has been a focus of research, most of previous reports were limited to fixed working conditions of the microwave oven [15-20] and there is no comprehensive report addressing the effects of these heating parameters on the synthesis of nanomaterials [21-23]. Furthermore, there are few reports on synthesizing the Copper and its oxide Nanoparticles without template at mild condition by the use of microwave method. Here, we report a simple microwave method to fabricate well aligned Copper and its oxide Nanoparticles (CuO NPs) on a Copper surface without any template and surfactant [24-26].