3D rod-like copper oxide with nanowire hierarchical structure: Ultrasound assisted synthesis from Cu2(OH)3NO3 precursor, optical properties and formation mechanism

• Ultrasound assisted method was used for synthesis of 3D hierarchical CuO microrods.
• Ultrasound was found favoring oriented self-assembly of nanowires, forming 3D rods.
• NO3−NO3− ions was found playing an important role on formation of 3D CuO rods.
• The 3D CuO rod has strong light harvesting ability with a narrow band gap 1.54 eV.
• The 3D CuO rod emits strong purple-blue light.

3-dimensional (3D) rod-like CuO with nanowire hierarchical structure has been synthesized successfully by a facile ultrasound assisted method combined with thermal conversion, using rouaite Cu2(OH)3NO3 as the precursor. The product was characterized by XRD, SEM, TEM, HRTEM and FT-IR spectrum. Its optical properties were studied by means of UV–Vis diffuse reflectance absorption spectroscopy and photoluminescence (PL) spectrum. Series of control experiments have been performed to explore influencing factors to the product morphologies and a possible formation mechanism has been proposed. The results show that each CuO rod assembled by tens of nanowires is 200–300 nm in diameter and about 1000 nm in length. Each nanowire contains many interconnected nanoparticles with sizes of about 15 nm. Particularly, ultrasound processing was found beneficial to the formation of the 3D rod-like CuO with nanowire hierarchical structure.

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