Synthesis of vanadium carbide nanopowders by thermal processing and their characterization

Vanadium carbide (V8C7) nanopowders were successfully prepared by thermal processing the precursor which originated from the mixture of ammonium vanadate (NH4VO3) and nanometer carbon black. The products were characterized by X-ray diffractometry (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) methods. The single phase V8C7 powders can be prepared at ∼ 1100 °C for 1 h with the average crystallite size of 32.6 nm and the powders show good dispersion and are mainly composed of uniformly-sized spherical particles with a mean diameter of ∼ 100 nm.