Preparation and characterization of strontium zirconate (SrZrO3) fine powders

A simple chemical coprecipitation route is described to synthesize a molecular precursor, namely, strontium zirconyl oxalate [SrZrO(C2O4)2·6H2O], i.e. (SZO) at room temperature. In this route soluble sodium zirconyl oxalate [Na2ZrO(C2O4)2] is initially prepared by chemical reaction of 0.1 M solution of zirconyl nitrate [ZrO(NO3)2] with 0.2 M solution of sodium oxalate. The anionic species ZrO(C2O4)22− thus obtained are exchanged by adding equimolar 0.1 M solution of strontium nitrate [Sr(NO3)2] while stirring to precipitate single phase SZO. The controlled pyrolysis of SZO in air at 900°C produced submicron sized (<0.1 μm) monophasic orthorhombic SrZrO3 fine powders. Various physico-chemical techniques were used to characterize the molecular precursor SZO as well as SrZrO3 powders obtained by its pyrolysis. All these results related to synthesis and characterization of these powders are presented in this paper.