Abstract
The present work reports a study on the effect that a peptiser species has on the crystallisation of alumina gel produced by a sol–gel process to help develop a method for producing α-Al2O3 at low temperature. The white precipitate of aluminium hydroxide, which was prepared with a homogeneous precipitation method using aluminium nitrate and urea in an aqueous solution, was peptised using various peptisers at room temperature to form a transparent alumina sol. The alumina gel obtained from the alumina sol, which was produced using formic acid as the peptiser, was most dominantly crystallised into α-Al2O3 by annealing at 900°C. The optimal [peptiser]/[Al3+] (P/A) molar ratio for the crystallisation into α-Al2O3 was 0.2. The alumina gel began to crystallise into α-Al2O3 with annealing at as low as 500°C when formic acid and a P/A ratio of 0.2 were used.
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