Controlled synthesis of Cu2S microrings and their photocatalytic and field emission properties

•Hierarchical microrings and porous microrings of Cu2S were successfully synthesized.•The morphologies of the material can be modified by different amount PVP, mixed solvent, time.•The microrings had excellent photodegradation performance in photocatalytic experiments.•The microrings show the lower turn-on field and lower threshold field in field emission measurement.

Hierarchical microrings and porous microrings were synthesized through a facile solvothermal method employing CuCl and thiourea as Cu and S source, respectively, and PVP as surfactant. The PVP-dependent experiments show that PVP plays an important role in forming the microrings. A possible growth mechanism based on the Ostwald ripening was proposed. Besides, the photocatalytic abilities of the as-prepared Cu2S crystal (microrings and microspheres) were investigated by testing the photodegradation of methylene blue (MB), and the result demonstrates that the microrings had excellent photodegradation performance due to the hierarchical and porous structure. Moreover, the field emission properties of as-prepared samples (microrings and microspheres) were measured firstly. The results indicated that the microrings with sharp sheets and particles possessed better field emission performance with a lower turn-on field of 2.5 V/μm, lower threshold field of 8.8 V/μm and larger enhancement factor of 2350, indicating its potential application for emission display devices.

Graphical abstractHierarchical microrings and porous microrings of Cu2S, which have the excellent performance in photocatalytic and field emission properties, were synthesized through a facile solvothermal method. The mechanism of Cu2S is proposed in this paper.Figure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload as PowerPoint slide