The microstructure and defects of CuO nanoparticles under isochronal annealing were investigated by positron annihilation spectroscopy (PAS), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscope (SEM). XRD and SEM results indicated that the average grain sizes of CuO nanoparticles grew slowly below 800 °C, and then increased rapidly with the annealing temperature from 800 to 1000 °C. Positron lifetime analysis exhibited that positrons were mainly annihilated in mono-vacancies (VCu , VO) and vacancy clusters when annealing from 200 to 800 °C. Furthermore,W-S plot of Doppler broadening spectra at different annealing temperatures found that the (W,S) points distributed on two different defect species, which suggested that complexes were produced when the grains grew to bigger size after annealing above 800 °C, and positrons might annihilate at these complexes.
Keywords:
positron annihilation; defect; nanoparticle; CuO