Synthesis of Metal Oxide Nanopowders via Polyacrylamide Gel Method: Influence of Precursors

The polyacrylamide sol-gel method is a fast, cheap and easy to scale-up method for obtaining nanopowders of a wide variety of ceramic materials. The aim of the present work is to synthesize nanosized alumina and zirconia powders via this method and investigate the effect of initial salt on the size of the synthesized nanaopowders. The obtained results showed that the presence of nitrate or chloride ions affects the synthesized nanoparticle size via two different mechanisms: the crystallization and polymeric network degradation. In zirconia synthesis, the retarded crystallization mechanism dominated over the polymeric network degradation and powders synthesized with nitrate base salt are smaller, but in alumina synthesis, two entitled mechanisms eliminate the effects of each other and there is no obvious difference between particle sizes.

Keywords:

Polyacrylamide Gel , Ceramic , Nanopowder , Precursor