Perovskite materials are pretty tricky to synthesise – particularly those with AxA1–x‘BO3 structure. Conventional solid state approaches suffer from contamination with unreacted materials and even sol-gel processes can result in materials with structural defects and impurities.
Chi-Young Lee and co-workers from National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan have set out to find a simpler route to synthesise these troublesome materials, developing a chemical method that requires the lowest temperature reported to date for perovskite synthesis.
Their method involves mixing TiO2 with the desired Group 2 hydroxide in sodium hydroxide solution and refluxing at 140 °C. By varying the reaction time, they were able to control the morphology as they demonstrated for SrTiO3, attributing the different forms to the relative stabilities of the crystal planes. What’s more, they could tune the composition of BaxSr1–xTiO3 through stoichiometric adjustment of the starting materials.
To find out more on Lee and his team’s perovskite synthesis, download the CrystEngComm article today…
Simple chemical preparation of perovskite-based materials using alkali treatment
Also of interest…
- Local structural distortion of BaZrxTi1–xO3 nanocrystals synthesized at room temperature, F. A. Rabuffetti and R. L. Brutchey, Chem. Commun., 2012, 48, 1437.
- Low-temperature synthesis of solid-solution BaxSr1–xTiO3 nanocrystals, R. L. Brutchey et al., J. Mater. Chem., 2010, 20, 5074.
