Effect of reducing agents in the conversion of Cu2O nanocolloid to Cu nanocolloid

Current work reports the conversion of copper (I) oxide, nano-colloid to stable copper nanocolloid. Different reduction conditions were attempted to control the stability and size of the Cu nanoparticles. Hydrazine hydrate, ascorbic acid and glucose are found to be good reductants. In our work stable copper nanoparticles are obtained by reducing Cu2O without any special protections like inert gas atmosphere etc. Ascorbic acid, a natural vitamin C not only reduces cuprous oxide but protects the new born copper due to its antioxidant properties. A red shift is observed when Cu2O nanospheres get converted to Cu. UV, XRD, FTIR and TEM were used to characterize the prepared Cu nanoparticles. The mechanism for the growth process of Cu nanomaterials are discussed. (C) 2016 Karabuk University. Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).