Synthesis and electrochemical properties of different sizes of the CuO particles

Well-dispersed cupric oxide (CuO) nanoparticles with the size from 10 to 100 nm were successfully synthesized by thermal decomposition of CuC2O4 precursor at 400 °C. The prepared CuO nanoparticles of different sizes used as anode materials for Li ion battery all exhibit high electrochemical capacity at the first discharge. However, with the particles size changing, an interesting phenomenon appears. That is, the larger size of the particles is, the discharge capacity of the first time smaller is, while that of the second time is larger. At the same time, the mechanism of the above phenomenon is discussed in this paper. Surprisingly, we have synthesized the copper nanoparticles with different sizes by the CuO of different sizes as the electrodes.