Facile synthesis of copper oxide nanoparticles via electrospinning

A novel approach for synthesizing copper oxide (CuO) nanoparticles (NPs) through electrospinning is reported. The approach is based on producing rough and discontinuous electrospun nanofibers from a precursor based on copper acetate salt and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) polymer. Selectively removing the polymeric phase from the fibers produced highly rough CuO nanofibers, which were composed of NPs that are weakly held together in a one-dimensional (1D) manner. Sonication in a suitable liquid under controlled conditions completely disintegrated the nanofibers into NPs, resulting in the formation of uniform CuO NPs suspension. Aberration corrected high resolution transmission electron microscope (HRTEM) showed that the obtained NPs are highly crystalline and nearly sphere-like with a diameter of 30 to 70 nm. Thus, electrospinning, which is a low cost and industrially scalable technique, can also be employed for economic and large scale synthesis of NPs.