Lab talk
Feb 20, 2009
A low-temperature route for the preparation of nano-sized CaRuO3
An increasingly important area of application for CaRuO3 is its use as a substrate for epitaxial growth in multilayer electronic devices. Also, as it has no magnetic order, it can also be used as an effective electrode material for ferroelectric devices and for use in a Josephson junction as a metallic barrier.
In this study, which was published in Nanotechnology, the authors used reverse micelle synthesis to produce nano-sized CaRuO3. It was found that by sintering the amorphous precursor at 500 °C that crystalline nanoparticles of CaRuO3 formed, whereas, sintering at higher temperatures resulted in the formation of rod-like crystals of the perovskite structure.
The formation temperature of CaRuO3 from amorphous precursors, reported in the paper, to form nano-sized crystals is very much lower than the standard solid state reactions between CaCO3 and RuO2, which, subsequently, have to be ground if fine particles are required.
About the author
Shuqiang Jiao is a post doctoral research assistant, supported by the EPSRC, Kamal Tripuraneni Kilby is a research student, supported by the EPSRC and British Titanium plc. and Derek Fray is a Director of Research and Emeritus Professor of Materials Chemistry. All three of the researchers are members of the Materials Chemistry Group, Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, University of Cambridge. Lijuan Zhang is a post doctoral research assistant in the Rolls-Royce UTP Group in the same Department.
