Aqueous sol-gel synthesis, thermoanalytical, structural and vibrational studies of lithium aluminium molybdate (LiAlMo2O8)

Aqueous tartaric acid-assisted sol-gel preparation technique was success-fully applied to synthesise lithium aluminium molybdate with the initial composition of LiAl(MoO4)2. From the results of the thermal analysis and X-ray diffraction measurement, the effect of tartaric acid as a ligand on the for-mation of homogeneous gel precursor was discussed. Besides, X-ray diffrac-tion also revealed the crystallisation of the final LiAlMo2O8 ceramic below the temperature of 400?C. It was found that the initial composition of ob-tained ceramic significantly affected the formation of the impurity phase de-fined as AlMo2O12. The Rietveld refinement of the crystalline samples showed the tendency of crystallites growing with the increase of heat-treatment tem-perature. Similar trends of particle growing were also observed in the im-ages of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) for the corresponding samples heat-treated at different temperatures. Finally, the Fourier-transform infra-red spectroscopy (FT-IR) revealed the effect of both the surface morphology and the crystallite size on the intensity of characteristic vibration of the corresponding chemical bonds.