Modification of morphological, structural and optical properties of SILAR-based growth of CuO films on glass-slides by addition of dextrin

•The first study on effects of dextrin content on the properties of CuO nanostructures.•Dextrin considerably manipulates the bandgap and modifiesthe crystallite size.•Band gap and transmittance values of the films increased at higher dextrin content.

This paper presents the effect of dextrin addition to the growth solution to prepare CuO nanostructures by SILAR method. Structural, morphological and optical properties of the films were investigated by means of XRD, SEM and UV/Vis. analysis. From the XRD data it is found that with increasing dextrin concentrations in the growth solution the crystallite size of the films decreased. SEM images showed that dextrin addition has a decreasing effect on grain size and changes the morphology drastically. By UV/Vis spectrophotometer analysis it is found that the dextrin concentration increases both the optical band gap value and the transmission rate.