A new route to prepare magnesium oxide whisker

This paper presents a new route to prepare magnesium oxide whisker. The preparation process consists of the synthesis of a precursor called magnesium oxysulfate (MOS) whisker, followed by the heat treatment of the synthesized whisker. The precursor whisker was prepared by hydrothermal synthesis reaction between MgSO4 solution and MgO or Mg(OH)2 preferably at 130–170 °C and at 3–8 atm. MgO whisker can then be easily obtained by simply heating the MOS whisker at temperatures higher than 900 °C. These two whiskers were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electronic microscopy (SEM).