Relevance of thermal analysis for sol–gel-derived nanomaterials

• DOI: 10.1007/s10971-018-4583-4
• Publication Date: 2018-02-28T09:39:27Z
• Authors: M. Zaharescu; L. Predoana; J. Pandele
• Keywords: Nanomaterials; Hybrid material; Characterization

It is well known that the first step of the sol-gel method consists in obtaining of amorphous or incipient crystallized materials that could be kept in the same state or could be transformed into vitreous or crystallized materials by adequate thermal treatments. In the present study, examples regarding the relevance of the thermal analysis methods for the characterization of the sol–gel-derived oxide systems, inorganic–organic hybrids, and composite nanomaterials are discussed. For the oxide systems, case studies regarding undoped and doped monocomponent oxides and polycomponent systems are discussed. In the case of inorganic–organic hybrids, the correlation between the type of precursors and the thermal behavior is presented. For the composite nanomaterials, examples for thermal behavior of two types of nanocomposites, namely both compositionally and structurally different, as well as inorganic–organic hybrid sol-gel nanocomposites are shown. In all studied cases, the thermal analysis methods allow obtaining important information not only on thermal behavior but also on the chemical composition of the as-prepared gels and powders. Different structural investigations methods (XRD, FTIR, and Raman) sustain the results obtained by thermal investigations.