Facile synthesis of La2Mo2O9 nanoparticles via an EDTA complexing approach

A facile EDTA (ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid) complexing technique has been successfully employed to prepare La2Mo2O9 nanoparticles. The as-synthesized products are characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). The results show that a homogeneous transparent gel can be obtained with EDTA as the organic complexing reagent under the pH value of 3.0. Further thermal decomposition of the as-synthesized transparent gel by increasing the temperature up to 600°C for 3 h results in the formation of La2Mo2O9 nanoparticles with a crystal size of about 30 nm. Moreover, the nanoparticles tend to form micrometer-sized aggregates with a three-dimensional network structure, which shows promising applications in solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC), catalysts and so on.