Ceramic powder prepared by a wet method

In the present paper we present the preparation of zirconium titanate powder via hydroxoperoxoprecursors. The effects of progressive thermal treatment on this precursor have been investigated by series of techniques. Zirconium titanate is a very well known material for a wide field of applications. It constitutes one of the most important families of ferroelectric material. Their longstanding use in ceramic capacitors has been joined more recently by their applications as resonator components in filters and frequency-stable oscillators in the GHz range. The binary system TiO2-ZrO2 has been shown to be a potential material capable of being used as catalytic or photocatalytic material. The electrolyte used was a mixture of ZrOCl2-8H2O and TiCl4 dissolved in water. All the chemicals were reagent grade. The water was deionized. The bath temperatures were controlled within a range of 20-30 deg. C. The anode and the cathode were two winding concentric wires. They were placed vertically in the center of the beaker. The non-isothermal thermal gravimetric (TG) trace was recorded using a heating rate of 4 deg. C min-1. Differential thermal gravimetric analysis (DTA) was obtained at a heating rate of 10 deg. C with a thermal analyzer. The DTA analysis showed a great endothermic effect at ∼100 deg. C which was assigned principally to water elimination. The sharp exothermal effect at 640 deg. C suggests the crystallization of a new phase. The TG diagram is consistent with some of the above suggestions. Thus, the main weight loss can be associated with the endothermic effect observed by DTA and attributed to water elimination. The x-ray diffraction patterns were obtained at room temperature with a DRON - 3 using Cu Kα radiation and nickel filter. The obtained powder were found to be amorphous. The weak diffraction peaks observed after heating at 500 deg. C reflect the beginning of a structural ordering and nucleation. These peaks correspond to zirconium titanate. Zirconium titanate powder was produced at the cathode of a electrochemical cell room temperature. The thermal treatment was shown by X-ray analysis to be single phase. (authors)