Abstract
Uniform Cu2O nanocubes were synthesized via wet chemical reduction method using ascorbic acid in alkali solution in short reaction period, which is simple, easy to mass production and cost-effective. Size of Cu2O nanocubes were adjusted by nucleation. Adding chelating agent markedly affects the concentration of Cu2+(aq), resulting in less amount of Cu2O nucleuses, which leads to significantly enlarged the size of Cu2O. The smallest Cu2O nanocubes can be synthesized by further adjusting the addition sequence of the reagents. Various-sized Cu2O nanocubes were applied in the application of adsorption, photocatalyst and glucose sensing. The smallest Cu2O nanocubes have the best performance when used in those applications. At 25 ppm MO, 15 nm Cu2O nanocubes with high surface area and positive zeta potential needs 70 min to reach the adsorbed percentage of approximately 99 %, which performs even better than that of conventional activated carbon. Under Xe lamp irradiation, the concentration of 25 ppm MO lowered to about 1 % just after 30 min. Furthermore, the smallest Cu2O nanocubes (15 nm) also exhibits a high sensitivity of 366.2 µA mM-1 (R2 = 0.9953) and linear range between 0.005 - 1.5 mM.