Shape-Controlled Synthesis Of Copper Nanoparticles

The properties of nanoparticles depend on not only the size, but also the shape. Special particles with different morphology generally have various surface structure and character. Recently, the shape-controlled synthesis of metal nanoparticles has been attracting more and more attention. Metal nanoparticles shaped in tetrahedrons, cubes, nanorods, wire and vesicles have been obtained through shape controlling technology. Owing to their potential applications in many areas, such as in thermal conduction, electronics, nanofluid and catalysis, metal nanoparticles have attracted much attentions.In this paper, non-template, soft and hard templates methods have been used to prepare copper particles in different shapes. In non-template methods, the copper ultrafine powder shaped in cub and hollow sphere were synthesized through reducting copper salt directly. The effect of temperature and reactant concentrations on the shapes of copper ultrafine powder was discussed. The formation mechanism of hollow Cu spheres were probed.In soft template methods, by changing the reaction media and adding surfactant, spherical, rod and oval-shaped nano-copper were obtained. Specially the copper nanoparticles with smallest size, about4nm was synthesized in aqueous solution system with PVP.In hard template methods, the elliptic β-FeOOH particles modified PEI were used as template to be coated with copper shell, Cu/β-FeOOH composite nanoparticles were obtained. The TEM, XRD, FT-IR, UV-Vis and TG-DTA were used to character these composite particles.