Influence of heat-treating temperature upon the light absorption for commercial CuCr2O4

Abstract

Abstract The influence of heat-treating temperature upon the light absorption for commercial CuCr2O4 is firstly studied through analyzing the light absorptance, band-gap and microstructure of commercial CuCr2O4 heat-treat at different temperature. Heat-treatment makes commercial CuCr2O4 get an increase of lattice distance for (2\xa02\xa00) space and produce interesting crystal fringes upon the octahedral shape grains, alleviating the symmetry of spinel crystal structure, and result in the increasing of band-gap and the improvement of light absorption for CuCr2O4. With the heat-treatment of 900\u202f°C for 5\u202fh, commercial CuCr2O4 obtains a pure phase and an increase of band-gap from 1.6887\u202feV to 1.747\u202feV, and achieves a light absorptance as high as 92.13%. The results of this research are valuable for commercial CuCr2O4 being applied in catalyst and solar energy materials.