Synthesis and characterization of copper oxalate and copper oxide nanoparticles by statistically optimized controlled precipitation and calcination of precursor

Taguchi robust design was applied to indicate the importance of some variables such as copper and oxalate ion concentrations, flow rate of reagent feeding to the reactor and temperature on the formation of CuC2O4 nano-disks by chemical precipitation. The prepared copper oxalate nano-disks under optimum conditions of synthesis have an average thickness of 60 nm. Meanwhile, CuC2O4 nano-disks as the precursor material were calcined at 350 °C under a static air atmosphere for thermal decomposition of the precursor and formation of copper oxide. CuO nanoparticles with average diameters about 55 nm and spherical morphology were obtained. Synthesized nanoparticles were characterized by SEM, XRD and FT-IR.