Synthetic mechanism of Ba(Zr, Ti)O₃ by sol-gel technique from the inorganic zirconium raw materials

In order to fabricate the piezoelectric ceramic with high performance and low cost, the sol-gel technical method was employed to synthesize the Ba(Zr,Ti)O₃ sol and ceramic powders by using inorganic zirconium as resource and acetic acid and glycol as solvents. XRD and TEM results show that the Ba(Zr,Ti)O₃ powders are pure perovskite structure, and the Ba(Zr,Ti)O₃ powders are approximate ball shape with diameters about 40 nm. The synthetic mechanism of Ba(Zr,Ti)O₃ sol was investigated by IR and GC-MS technique. The results demonstrate the main chemical reactions with ethylene glycol, acetic acid, barium acetate, tetrabutyl titanate, and zirconium citrate produced during the sol-gel process that the chain polymer is formed with Me-O as the central atom and with the solvent of glycol and acetic acid as the branch chain, which is conducive to improve the quality and stability of Ba(Zr,Ti)O₃ sol and gel.