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Investigations of phase composition and grain size distribution in Pr doped ZrO2 |
Agnieszka Opalińska 1, Roman Pielaszek 1, Cristina Leonelli 2, Witold Łojkowski 1, Tomasz Wejrzanowski 3, Hubert Matysiak 3 |
1. Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of High Pressure Physics (UNIPRESS), Sokolowska 29/37, Warszawa 01-142, Poland |
Abstract |
A high pressure microwave reactor, i.e., a reactor where microwave energy is used to heat the fluids inside the high pressure cell was used to study the hydrothermal synthesis of zirconia doped with praseodymium (Pr content 1 mol%) in temperature range was from 210 to 305oC. Nanopowders with average grain size in the range of 10 nm were obtained. A mixture of nanoparticles with tetragonal and monoclinic phase structure was obtained. A new method to determine the grain size distribution, which is based on analysis of the fine structure of the X-ray diffraction line profiles, was applied. It was found that the content of the monoclinic phase decreased with increasing synthesis pressure up to 8 MPa due to dissolution or transformation of grains of smaller diameter than about 12 nm. Keywords: Hydrothermal synthesis; Microwave; High Pressure; Zirconia; Praseodymium; Grain Size Distribution |