Preparation And Characterizations Of Amorphous Zirconia Nanoparticles

Recently, amorphous material has attracted much attention because it has more excellent properties compared with its crystalline counterparts caused by the significant structural difference. Nanoglass is consisted of nanometer sized glassy regions connected by "glass/glass interfaces". The "interfaces" between adjacent glassy regions have an enhanced free volume compared with the glassy region. Due to the structural difference, i.e. the inhomogeneously distributed enhanced free volume, nanoglass may have different properties compared with the glass. So, in order to prepare the nanoglass which has many excellent properties and then study its properties, we should try to prepare amorphous nanoparticles firstly,.Because zirconia has many properties of high hardness, high strength, high toughness, high wear resistance and chemical resistance, excellent physical and chemical properties. Zirconia has been widely applied in the field of ceramics, refractory materials, machinery, electronics, optics, aerospace, biotechnology, chemical, etc. Therefore, we prepare nanoglass with zirconia. First, we try to prepare amorphous zirconia powder with high purity, monodisperse, and nano-scale. Second, the amorphous powders is compressed by high-pressure in ultrahigh vacuum to the block and try to prepare zirconia nanoglasses. There is literature reported that they prepare the amorphous nanoparticles by means of coprecipitation method, but it has serious reunion. For the better amorphous nanoparticles, this paper uses heating of alcohol-aqueous salt solution. We use two steps to prepare the amorphous nanoparticles. Firstly, amorphous zirconium hydroxide precursor is synthesized by heating of alcohol-aqueous salt solution, and then the precursor is calcined under low temperature in air to obtain amorphous nanoparticles. At last, the products were characterized and the result implies that we are better control the particle size, and better dispersed amorphous zirconia nanoparticles compared with the literature reported.