Hydrothermal synthesis and magnetic properties of CuO hollow microspheres

•CuO hollow microspheres were synthesized through hydrothermal route.•The possible growth mechanism was proposed according to the experimental results.•CuO hollow microspheres show an anomalous ferromagnetic behavior at 5 K and 300 K.

In the present work, CuO hollow microspheres with the diameter about 2 μm were successfully synthesized through a facile hydrothermal method. The phase purity, morphologies and structure features of the as obtained products were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Raman spectroscopy, respectively. It was found that reaction temperature, reaction time and different volume ratios of ethanol and distilled water played important roles on the morphologies of the obtained CuO hollow microspheres. The possible formation mechanism was also proposed according to the corresponding experimental results. The magnetic properties were investigated by superconducting quantum interference device, revealing that the CuO hollow microspheres exhibited an anomalous ferromagnetic behavior at 5 K and 300 K. At the same time, the origin of the ferromagnetism in CuO hollow microspheres was also discussed.

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