Preparation and Characterization of Carbon Encapsulated Cu Nanoparticles

The Cu nanoparticles are researched because of its excellent performance in catalysis,electrochemistry in recent years.However,the application of Cu,is significantly restricted because of its liability to be oxidized;therefore,researches of copper nanoparticles encapsulated in carbonaceous shells is an important issue.In this paper,the Cu nanoparticles with shell structure which are encapsulated by the carbon can be prepared by using copper nitrate as source for the metal,sucrose as carbon substrate,through reducing and annealing.The sample is researched by means of XRD,SEM,TEM,Raman and other tests.The result indicates that the uniform size distribution of the particles exhibit well-constructured shell structure: the metal core consists of copper with fcc structure(the size varies between 20nm and 60nm);the shell is amorphous carbon with weak graphitization and the thickness is about 10nm.