Polymeric Copper Oxide: Preparation and Investigation of Its Structure and Optical Properties

A complex of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) with copper hydroxide was used as a precursor to obtain polymeric copper oxide through thermal decomposition. The absence of Cu(OH)(2) crystalline phase was observed for the component ratio up to 1 Cu(OH)(2) molecular unit to 3 PVA residuals. The formation of crystalline copper oxide was not observed after the dehydration of this material. UV-VIS and IR spectroscopy, and computational modeling were used to study the structure and properties of the obtained materials. A comparison with other similar materials was drawn. It was found that experimental data are in general accordance with the computations based on the polymeric model for copper hydroxide/oxide as a component of hybrid interpolymeric complex with PVA. A distinctive feature observed for polymeric copper oxide is strong broadening of the optical absorption band at 400nm. It is suggested that this effect is caused by strong electron-phonon interaction, which is also responsible for superconductivity of copper oxide based systems.