Investigations Upon Preparation And Structure Of Aluminium Borate Whiskers

Aluminium borate nano-materials have excellent properties in the traditional composite materials, such as high strength, low thermal expansion coefficient, high electric conductivity. Aluminum borate has a wide range of applications in light metal composite materials, ceramics, glass and paint etc.. The microstructure and preparation method of aluminum borate is always a hot point in materials research.Using alumina and boron oxide as raw materials, aluminum borate whiskers were tried by molten salt method and the aluminium borate compound with various particles morphologies were prepared successfully. Analysis technologies, such as XRD, SEM, TEM, TG-DTA etc., were used to character the samples. Further, the possible effects of various factors, such as the calcination temperature, holding time and salt content etc., on aluminum borate morphologies were investigated.The results show that the factors, such as raw material, calcination temperature, holding time and the type of molten salt etc., have important influence on the aluminum borate particles morphologies. Aluminum borate whiskers, octahedrons and nanosheets with higher quality could be produced by controlling the process conditions.The molten salt method is relatively simple and easy to operate in synthesizing inorganic nonmetal materials. Depending upon this method, the products with higher purity can be prepared at relatively low temperature. Moreover, the shape and size of the product powders can be controlled by adjusting the synthetic temperature and the ratio of raw materials. So, the molten salt method is environment-friendly and cost effective, and has a good application prospect. Besides, based on the obtained research results, the growth mechanism of aluminum borate powders with different morphologies was studied. The reasonable growth processes of aluminum borate in the reaction process were proposed. Due to its extensive applications in different areas, the measurement of aluminum borate in tensile strength, electrical conductivity and dielectric properties should be explored in the future research.