On the synthesis and crystallization process of nanocrystalline PZT powders obtained by a hybrid sol-gel alkoxides route

Sol-gel synthesis has been a very successful and efficient route for obtaining high quality ferroelectric materials. Particularly, the alkoxides based route has proven its advantages due to the better homogeneity and easier controlled gelation rate. In this work, butoxides and propoxides are used to obtain nanocrystalline PZT powders in order to determine the influence of each B-site precursor on crystallization. Along with this, we study the involved chemical reactions (reactants and intermediates) and the crystallization process by using several spectroscopic techniques (Raman, FT-IR and XRD) as well as thermogravimetric (TGA) and calorimetric (DTA) analysis. The evolution of the initial gel solution and the amorphous powder into the final perovskite PZT phase is traced. According to our results, the propoxy route tends to be the more suitable for good PZT crystallization under our experimental conditions.