Atmospheric-pressure microplasma as anode for rapid and simple electrochemical deposition of copper and cuprous oxide nanostructures

There has been growing attention on plasma electrodes, as they are much cheaper than commonly used metal electrodes such as Pt and have renewable electrode interfaces. However, most research was mainly focused on plasma cathodes, while the research and application of plasma anodes has been rarely reported. In this paper, we applied an atmospheric-pressure microplasma as a gaseous anode for transferring positive charges and inducing electrochemical reactions in solution. Cu and Cu2O nanocrystals have been co-deposited on ITO cathodes in 100 mM CuSO4 solution at room temperature. By simply changing the precursor concentration and reaction temperatures, pure Cu and Cu2O product could be prepared. Our work will expend the application area of plasma electrodes in electrochemistry and nanomaterials synthesis, and it is also a new rapid and simple electrochemical method for preparing copper and cuprous oxide nanostructures.