Alternative method to precipitation techniques for synthesizing yttrium oxide nanopowder

Yttrium oxide nano-powder has been successfully synthesized by a novel approach. In the first step, a foamy structure was produced by combustion synthesis using yttrium nitrate and glycine. This was followed by the addition of sulfate ions and calcination at 1100 °C for 4 h. The sulfated and unsulfated powders were characterized by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller method (BET). The sinterability of the resulting powders was also studied by dilatometry. The studies indicated that this method not only allows for producing weakly-agglomerated nano-particles, but is also a very time-efficient process in comparison to precipitation techniques. Moreover, the possibility of performing all processing steps in a fully automated batch reactor was also considered.