Sputtering based synthesis of CuO nanoparticles and their structural, thermal and optical studies

In the current research, we report the synthesis of CuO nanoparticles using dc reactive magnetron sputtering technique at various sputtering pressure (10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 mTorr) and their structural, thermal and optical properties. The characterization of the synthesized CuO nanoparticles was carried using powder XRD, Raman spectroscopy, FT-IR, FE-SEM, EDX, TEM, TGA and UV-vis DRS. XRD results exhibited the monoclinic phase of CuO nanoparticles and the crystallite size increases with increase in sputtering pressure. The EDX and Raman analysis confirm the formation of high purity CuO nanoparticles. The particle size of synthesized nanoparticles was calculated using TEM analysis. The FE-SEM and TEM results show spherical morphology in aggregated form. TGA results reveal that nanoparticles are purely hydrous and weight loss was inversely correlated to the particle size. UV-DRS results indicated that the band gap energy decreased with increase of sputtering pressure due to increase in particle size.