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Sol-gel synthesis

materials processing
Alternative Titles: sol-gel processing, sol-gel route

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advanced ceramics

An increasingly popular method for producing ceramic powders is sol-gel processing. Stable dispersions, or sols, of small particles (less than 0.1 micrometre) are formed from precursor chemicals such as metal alkoxides or other metalorganics. By partial evaporation of the liquid or addition of a suitable initiator, a polymer-like, three-dimensional bonding takes place within the sol to form a...


Silica glass also may be prepared from a liquid solution. In this technique, known as the sol-gel route, alcoholic solutions of organometallic precursors, generally alkoxides such as tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS), are hydrolyzed with water at low temperatures while stirring vigorously. Hydrolysis promotes chelation, or the formation of network-type atomic connections, until the mass gels. The...

preparation of amorphous solids

Figure 1: The state of atomic motion.
...ribbon at a speed that can exceed a kilometre per minute. In laser glazing, a brief intense laser pulse melts a tiny spot, which is swiftly quenched by the surrounding material into a glass. In sol-gel synthesis, small molecules in a liquid solution chemically link up with each other, forming a disordered network. It is possible to take a crystalline solid and convert it into an amorphous...
sol-gel synthesis
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