Hydrothermal synthesis and optical properties of single crystalline CuO nanosheets

In this paper, we have successfully synthesized high quality single crystalline CuO nanosheets through a simple hydrothermal method. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) investigations reveal that CuO nanosheets have the width of about 500 nm, length of about 1000 nm and thickness of about 50 nm. UV-vis absorption spectrum shows that optical band gap energy of CuO nanosheets has a blue shift compared with CuO bulk state. Raman spectrum shows there are three obviously CuO vibration modes, suggesting high purity and high crystalline of CuO nanosheets could be obtained under our experimental conditions. Room temperature photoluminescence (PL) spectrum shows that CuO nanosheets have an obviously emission band at about 523 nm. At the same time, N2 adsorption-desorption isotherm experiment shows that the BET specific surface area of obtained CuO nanosheets is 5.87 m2 g−1.