Effect of Concentration and Thermal Treatment on the Properties of Sol-Gel Derived CuO/SiO2 Nanostructure

Various concentrations of copper are embedded into silica matrix to xerogel formusing copper source - cu(no3)2·3h2o. the xerogel samples are prepared by hydrolysis andcondensation of tetraethyl orthosilicate (teos) by the sol-gel method and with determination ofnew molar ratio of components h2o/teos to be 6.2. in this investigation, the necessary amount oftrihydrated copper nitrate is added to the solution in such a manner that the concentration ofthe copper oxide in final solution reach to 1, 2 and 5 wt% (samples a, b and c respectively).after ambient drying, the gel samples are heated from 60 to 1000°c at a slow heating rate (50°c/h).the absorption and transmittance spectrum of various concentrations of copper are studied byuv-vis spectrophotometer. thermal treatment effects are characterized by ftir, tga, tem, sem,xrd, bet and tpr methods at different temperatures.