Study of the thermal property of copper oxide nanowires

As a high potential candidate for field-emission emitters, gas sensors, high-critical temperature superconductors, copper oxide NWs have been intensively studied in the synthesized methods, electrical properties and chemical properties. However, there are not many literatures report on the thermal property of them. It is important for one to understand the thermal behavior in order to justify the failure limit of the material especially in nanoscale. In this paper, copper oxide NWs synthesized through direct heating in atmospheric ambient were rapidly annealed in nitrogen ambient at different temperature to check the critical thermal failure point where the free standing copper oxide NWs start to collapse. It was found that copper oxide NWs with diameters around 100 nm started to collapse after 30 minutes of annealing in the nitrogen ambient at 300°C due to the thermal shock incurred by rapid annealing. Increase in temperature will cause the NWs with bigger diameters start to fail. NWs in same diameter range will be able to withstand the temperature up to several hours if no thermal shock is induced. This was happening even when the wires were heated in a higher temperature of 600°C. This result is important for copper oxide NWs when they are incorporated into the other heat sensitive device. The results are important for justifying the failure behavior for devices based on copper oxide NWs.