A facile hydrothermal route to synthesis of nonporous and porous hierarchical copper dendrites

Nonporous and porous hierarchical copper dendrites were synthesized by a facile hydrothermal treatment of copper–glycine complex in solution. X-ray diffraction (XRD), field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) have been used to investigate the dendritic structures. A possible growth process is proposed by arresting the growth at a series of intermediate morphology stages during the shape evolution of copper dendrites based on FESEM observations. The influence of glycine on the morphology development was experimentally investigated, and the experimental results show that glycine molecules have a significant modifying effect on the branching growth of copper crystal. This hydrothermal method may generally be applied to synthesis of other face-centered metal crystals with dendritic structure.