TEM study on hollow and porous Cu₂O nanoparticles prepared from solution phase

In this paper, hollow and porous Cu_2O nanoparticles were prepared by adjusting the cationic surfactant cetyltrimethylammonium (CTAB) concentration in the solution-phase reaction. Structural investigations reveal that Cu_2O nanoparticles can be either well-defined hollow nanoboxes or porous nanocubes depending on the synthesis conditions. The transmission electron microscopy (TEM) observations demonstrated that the nanoparticles in general are composed of small grains coherently growing along certain preferred orientations.