| Popis: |
Thermal oxidation of copper has been restudied to control the formation of photovoltaic active cupric oxide (CuO) phase against the cuprous oxide (Cu2O) phase. It has been established that the thermal oxidation of copper is governed by the outward lattice diffusion and grain boundary diffusion of copper ions at the interface. The lattice diffusion favors the formation of Cu2O phase whereas grain boundary diffusion favors the formation of CuO phase. In the present work, a fine copper powder is taken as starting material for thermal oxidation to increase the grain boundary diffusion and to study its on phase formation. Further, to suppress the grain boundary diffusion the starting material is chemically passivated with diethylenetriamine and olelamine to chameically passivated the surface defects. Thermal oxidation of these pre-treated materials is carried out in open air at temperature 500 o C and 700 o C to study the phase formation. The resulting materials are characterized by x-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy. These studies clearly confirm that grain boundary diffusion or defect mediated diffusion due to small particle size and more surface atoms of copper favor the formation of CuO at low temperature in case of pure copper, whereas the chemical passivation and high temperature heating favours the formation of Cu2O phase and hence the resulting material is biphasic. Hence, the present study is useful information in controlling the phase formation of copper oxide to obtain more photoactive material that is CuO. |
