Nanocrystalline bimetallic oxides from molecular precursors

Synthesis of bimetallic oxides from individual components poses a challenge on the conventional material processing methods largely due to the differences in the intrinsic chemical behaviour of the starting materials that leads to undesired stoichiometries and residual monometal phases in the final material. To a large extent, this limitation can be overcome by employing metalorganic precursors that contain all atomic constituents, required to form the target solid-state phase, in a single molecule. The fact that the extended solid-state structure is derived from molecular building blocks substantiates the inherent advantages of chemical methods due to controlled and defined reaction chemistry. We have examined the single-step conversion of various heterometal alkoxides via Sol-Gel process to obtain nanocrystalline bimetallic oxides with homogeneous particle sizes and narrow size-distributions.