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Controlled Synthesis of Tantalum Oxynitride and Nitride Nanoparticles
Author(s) -
Gao Qingsheng,
Giordano Cristina,
Antonietti Markus
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
small
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.785
H-Index - 236
eISSN - 1613-6829
pISSN - 1613-6810
DOI - 10.1002/smll.201101207
Subject(s) - dispersity , materials science , nitride , nanoparticle , tantalum , tantalum nitride , urea , chemical engineering , catalysis , nanotechnology , inorganic chemistry , chemistry , organic chemistry , polymer chemistry , layer (electronics) , engineering , metallurgy
Synthesis of monodisperse metal nitride and oxynitride nanoparticles with a controllable chemical composition, size, and a well‐defined morphology are useful for applications in fields of catalysis, optoelectronics, and electrochemistry. In this paper a novel method for the controllable synthesis of highly crystalline tantalum oxynitride and nitride nanoparticles with a relatively low polydispersity is presented using urea as the nitrogen source. In the presence of calcium ions as assisting agents, by simply varying the initial urea/Ta molar ratio, both the composition and size of the final product can be tailored to switch from TaON to Ta 3 N 5 . The mechanism proposed is that Ca 2+ slows down the release of NH 3 from the decomposition of urea, which is indispensable for the controllable synthesis of oxynitride and nitride based nanoparticles.