Synthesis of CuO nanorods via thermal decomposition of copper-dipicolinic acid complex

Template-free CuO nanorods were synthesized through a threestep chemical method with no waterinsoluble materials. The first step included the preparation of a Cucomplex, which was obtained from dipicolinic acid, Llysine, and copper nitrate. Then, as the second step, the obtained solution was allowed to be relaxed for a week to and formation of some blue singlecrystals single crystals, which would be assigned as a squarepyramidal copper complex by according to study analyzing its singlecrystal single crystal structure. Finally, as the third step, the blue prepared Cucomplex should be calcined to synthesis the CuO phase. Simultaneous thermal analysis (STA) was utilized to determine the optimum calcination temperature. Its results and showed that 600 °C is the optimum temperature. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis approved the formation of the CuO phase without any impurity which is matched with the monoclinic CuO standard lines (PDF No.: 74-1021). Especially, the asprepared CuO powder has shown clear nanorod morphology in transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images and exhibit a notable optical behavior and high band gap bandgap energy (Eg = 2.8 eV) in comparison to that of bulk CuO (Eg = 1.9-2 eV).