Synthesis of VN nanopowders by thermal nitridation of the precursor and their characterization

Vanadium nitride (VN) nanopowders can be synthesized by thermal nitridation of the precursor of ammonium vanadate (NH4VO3) and nanometer carbon black. The products were characterized by X-ray diffractometry (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) techniques. The results show that the single phase VN powders can be synthesized at 1100 °C for 1 h, and the powders show good dispersion and are mainly composed of uniformly sized spherical particles with a mean diameter of ∼50 nm. The surface of the specimen mainly consists of V, N, O and C four species elements, the peak core at 397.24 eV corresponds to N 1s of VN. The O 1s peaks with the binding energies of 530.40 eV and 532.15 eV are ascribed to vanadium pentoxide (V5+) and H2O (OH−), and the contents are very little. The C 1s profile is a single symmetric peak, which mainly comes from the polluted carbon used for the correction of the XPS measurement.