Synthesing and studying the structure of nanoscale copper (II) oxide stabilized by polyethylene glycol

Abstract

We developed a method for synthesising polyethylene glycol-stabilized copper oxide nanoparticles via a sol-gel process, obtained samples and investigated their structure, morphology and properties. We used photon correlation spectroscopy to establish that the copper oxide nanoparticles feature a monomodal size distribution with the average hydrodynamic radius of a particle being approximately 50 nm irrespective of the stabiliser molar mass. We detected an optical absorption band at 290 nm in all samples. We established that copper oxide samples consist of aggregates formed out of spherical nanoparticles whose diameters lie in the range of 10 to 30 nm. Phase composition analysis of the copper oxide samples revealed that the samples consist of particles featuring a monoclinic structure. We simulated the process of polyethylene glycol interacting with the copper oxide. We show that the most energetically favourable interaction model includes bond formation between the neighbouring intramolecular etheric oxygen atoms and the copper atom