Copper(II) oxide nanoparticles were synthesized at low temperature using cold finger assisted magnetron sputtering technique and were applied as adsorbent for the rapid removal of noxious Cr(VI) ions from the solvent phase. The average size of CuO nanoparticles from TEM analysis was found to be 8 nm in addition to this the BET surface area (84.327 m(2)/g) was found to be significantly high in comparison to the previously CuO nanoparticles synthesized via green route. The synthesized CuO nanoparticles is crystalline in nature and exhibits monoclinic phase, which was confirmed using various analytical techniques such as SAED, XRD and Raman analysis. The impact of influential parameters including pH, adsorbent dose, contact time, stirring speed, initial Cr(VI) ions concentration, and temperature were optimized using batch adsorption method in order to obtain maximum removal of Cr(VI) ions. From the thermodynamic parameters, the positive value of enthalpy (Delta H) and negative value of Gibbs free energy (Delta G) indicate the endothermic and spontaneous nature of Cr(VI) ions adsorption, respectively. The adsorption kinetics data was well fitted and found to be in good agreement with the pseudo second order kinetic behaviour. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.