Growth of flower-like copper oxide nanostructures by glow discharge in water

In this work, synthesis of flower-like copper oxide nanostructures via a plasma-assisted technique based on glow discharge in liquids has been reported for the first time. The preparation process was carried out in a reactor containing a glass discharge chamber with two copper electrodes immersed in distilled water. The effect of distance between electrodes on the rate of nanopowder production and the structural and morphological properties was investigated by XRD and FESEM. From the XRD patterns of as-grown samples, besides the CuO monoclinic structure, reflection peaks corresponding to Cu2O phase were also observed. It was found that Cu2O phase could be easily eliminated by annealing at 400 °C. FESEM images showed that the flower-like copper oxide nanostructures were composed of nanorods in size of a few hundreds of nanometers in length and 50-80 nm in diameter. In addition, the possible formation mechanism of flower-like copper oxide nanostructures was discussed.