I reduced CuO and Cu(OH)2 separately into Cu and performed FTIR. I want to make sure no traces of Cu-O or CuO-H bond remains in the final material. How can I analyze the FTIR spectra (attached file) of final Cu sample?
check the attached file and hope to be useful to you
Generally speaking, FTIR is sensitive to chemical groups. As metal Cu doesn't have any group, there should be nothing to see on the corresponding spectrum. Given all the peaks you have, your sample can never be pure copper. For example, the very broad band betwen 3300 and 3600 cm-1 indicates OH groups.
Alain
thanks Alain for your response. like Cu is not IR active , then it should not show any peak in fingerprint region, right?
Metals should not show any FT-IR absorption, like Alain writes. Infrared absorption is based on a nonzero transition dipole moment of vibrational modes. Metals certainly have vibrational modes, but light cannot activate it (the oscillating electric field at the right frequency will activate a vibrational mode of the same frequency when the transition dipole moment is non-zero).
So that said, correct, it should not show any peak in the fingerprint region either.
In Professor Elbagerma's link, Figure 5 appears to show FTIR spectrum of Cu(OH)2 - which is very similar to your own spectrum. So it would seem that you still have detectable amounts of the precursor. That said, FTIR is a very sensitive technique especially for functional groups with large transition dipole moments (such as the so-called O-H stretching mode). So you would want to set a goal of purity / conversion, since if you want 100% purity, then you are basically looking for a flat FTIR spectrum.
It would appear that what is going on in your spectrum in the 3600-3200 cm-1 range may be related to the hydroxide, meaning you are showing the presence of the CuO-H. However, one normally thinks of carbon bonds at 1000 and higher, and that most of what you want to do is below 1000, and likely even below 500 cm-1. So, I am not sure FTIR is the best way to analyze what you are trying to analyze.
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