Orange cuprous oxide (Cu2O) colloids were prepared in the process of reducing copper sulfate (CuSO4) by hydrazine hydrate in aqueous solution of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS)-polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) in the conditions of pH (10±0.5) and (40±1.0) ℃ for 55 min. XRD pattern displays that the centrifuged reduced products are pure cubic Cu2O crystals. SEM and TEM images show that the reduced products are hollow Cu2O submicrospheres with regular morphology and controlled size, and confirm that the hollow submicrospheres are composed of primary Cu2O nanocrystals with diameters of ca. 10 nm. The experiment supposed that the SDS-PVP necklace-like clusters perform a function of dual soft-template that results in a unique template-induced secondary assembly, through which one-pot synthesis of hollow Cu2O submicrospheres was completed. The possible one-pot synthesis route was thought as divided into two steps. At first, the primary Cu2O nanocrystals with average size of 10 nm are synthesized in SDS bound-micelles that are used as the primary soft-template. Then, the PVP chains play the role of the secondary soft-template which makes the primary Cu2O nanocrystals, in a certain space, aggregated and fabricated. The secondary hollow Cu2O submicrospheres are thus synthesized in one-pot in virtue of the PVP chains that will originally couple SDS bound-micelles three-dimensionally. The experiment results show that the one-pot synthesis is a gentle, facile and fast way to prepare the hollow Cu2O submicrospheres with narrow size-distribution.

Key words: cuprous oxide, hollow submicrosphere, one-pot synthesis, necklace-like soft cluster, sodium dodecyl sulfate, polyvinylpyrrolidone