In order to investigate the effect of copper oxide naturally formed on copper as the common anode current collector and as an electrode additive, the electrochemical behavior of lithium insertion in three naturally surface-oxidized copper powders and one copper foil was studied. Powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), particle size distribution measurement, galvanostatic cell cycling and cyclic voltammetry were employed for structural and electrochemical characterization. Although the XRD analysis can only detect the presence of pure Cu phase, the XPS analysis reveals clearly the presence of a CuO layer on the copper powders or the copper foil. The thickness of this CuO layer is estimated as thick as 147 nm. The lithiation capacity associated with this CuO layer can reach 48 mAh/g for copper powders but only 1 mAh/g for the foil. This small capacity, or 5.2 x 10(-3) mAh/cm(2) per unit area of copper foil, is fortunately negligible compared with that of a common anode material in a lithium-ion cell; while the capacity associated with this CuO layer must be taken into account when using a copper powder as an additive to improve the cycling stability. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.