Growth of homogenous CuO nano-structured thin films by a simple solution method

This paper describes a simple, low temperature and cost effective solution method to synthesize homogenous cupric oxide (CuO) nano-structured thin films. By this method dense and continuous CuO films with good crystallinity can be prepared in a short time, e.g., in 15 min. The scanning electron microscopy illustrated that the synthesized CuO plate-like nanostructures have RMS thicknesses of 100 nm. The XRD measurements showed that the synthesized CuO nanostructures have a high crystallinity with monoclinic crystal structure preferentially in ((1) over bar 1 1) and (1 1 1) directions. From the temperature dependant dark electrical resistivity measurements the ionization energies of the impurity levels and thermal band gap energies of the films were calculated. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.