A novel, simple, organic free preparation and characterization of water dispersible photoluminescent Cu2O nanocubes

A novel method was developed for the organic and polymer free preparation of Cu2O nanocubes. Water-dispersible Cu2O nanocubes were prepared at room temperature by using a simple two steps procedure: the reduction of copper(II) sulfate by sodium borohydride generates the copper(O) nanoclusters stabilized by hydrogenphosphate towards the aggregation in aqueous solution. The hydrogen phosphate stabilized copper(0) nanoclusters initially formed are slowly oxidized by dissolved oxygen forming the Cu2O nanocubes which were isolated from the Solution and characterized by using TEM, XRD, XPS, P-31 NMR, FTIR, Fluorescence and UV-Vis spectroscopic methods. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.