Novel synthesis of high phase-purity Mg2SnO4 from metallic precursors via powder metallurgy route

A novel yet simple technique of synthesizing oxide ceramics from metallic precursors has been described. Magnesium orthostannate, Mg2SnO4, a potential candidate for applications in high temperature-high frequency domain as a ceramic capacitor element, was synthesized from metallic tin and magnesium powders. An alloy of composition Mg2Sn was prepared by the conventional powder metallurgy route. This up on heating in air under carefully designed ordinary and mild experimental conditions, yielded single-phase inverse spinel type Mg2SnO4. The systematic evolution of phase(s) and powder morphology of the target oxide is discussed and compared with those in powders obtained by other techniques. The present method totally obviates the use of resilient oxides and of carbonate and nitrates precursors, which are invariably the source of environmental pollutants such as CO2 and NOx. In addition, the difficulties normally encountered in ceramic syntheses from the significant difference in particle size of the starting powders are also eliminated. The technique offers an environmental-friendly viable solution to making dense ceramics in thin multilayer formats (MLFs) with miniaturized dimensions, provided a suitable metallic alloy precursor can be found in the relevant binary/ternary phase diagram.