Potentiostatic deposition and characterization of cuprous oxide films and nanowires

Cuprous Oxide as an Active Material for Solar Cells

“…Electrical properties of Cu 2 O, such as carrier mobility, carrier concentration, and resistivity are very dependent on preparation methods. Cuprous oxide thin films have been prepared by various techniques like thermal oxidation (Jayatissa et al, 2009;Musa et al, 1998;Sears & Fortin, 1984), chemical vapor deposition (Kobayashi et al 2007;Maruyama, 1998;Medina-Valtierra et al, 2002;Ottosson et al, 1995;Ottosson & Carlsson, 1996), anodic oxidation (Fortin & Masson, 1982;Sears and Fortin, 1984;Singh et al, 2008), reactive sputtering (Ghosh et al, 2000), electrodeposition (Briskman, 1992;Daltin et al, 2005;Georgieva & Ristov, 2002;Golden et al, 1996;Liu et al, 2005;Mizuno et al, 2005;Santra et al, 1999;Siripala et al, 1996;Tang et al, 2005;Wang et al, 2007;Wijesundera et al, 2006), plasma evaporation (Santra et al, 1992), sol-gel-like dip technique (Armelao et al, 2003;Ray, 2001) etc. Each of these methods has its own advantages and disadvantages.…”

“…The electrodeposition temperature was 60 0 C. Authors obtained polycrystalline films of 4-6 μm in thickness with optical band gap of 2.38 eV. Daltin et al (2005) applied potentiostatic deposition method to obtain cuprous oxide nanowires in polycarbonate membrane by cathodic reduction of alkaline cupric lactate solution (0.45 M Cu(II) and 3.25 M lactate). Authors found that the optimum electrochemical parameters for the deposition of nanowires are: pH 9.1, temperature 70 0 C, and applied potential -0.9 V (SSE).…”

“…Its advantages are, in fact, relatively low cost and low toxicity. Except for a thin film that can be electrochemically formed on different substrates (steel, TiO 2 ), cuprous oxide can be obtained in the form of nano particles with all the benefits offered by nano-technology (Daltin et al, 2005;Zhou & Switzer, 1998). Nanomaterials exhibit novel physical properties and play an important role in fundamental research.…”

Size-Controlled Cu2O Nanocubes by Pulse Electrodeposition

“…9) Many efforts have been intensively devoted to the synthesis of Cu 2 O with a variety of shapes using electrochemical, thermal oxidation, solutionphase synthesis, sputtering, and chemical vapour deposition. [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] Among them, pulse electrodeposition method was found to be useful for nanostructure fabrication because of simple operation and uniform deposition. [18][19][20] However, since it is stable in an extremely narrow range, the Cu 2 O phase should be carefully fabricated.…”

Room temperature electrodeposition of photoactive Cd(OH)2 nanowires

“…Recently, template-assisted electrochemical synthesis has been shown to be a versatile, simple and low temperature approach for the preparation of metals oxide/hydroxide nanostructures [6][7][8][9][10]. The deposition usually occurs through a mechanism of electroprecipitation, according to which base is generated at the cathode/ electrolyte interface, where the hydroxide reaches its solubility product owing to the local increase of pH [11,12].…”