Abstract:

A sol-gel method based on the Pechini process was used to synthesize different phases of alumina nanoparticles using a polymeric precursor with Aluminum nitrate. The emphasis was on investigating the effect of two different complexing agents, urea and citric acid, on the structural properties, particle size, and phase transformation during the heat treatment that was studied by XRD, TEM, SEM, BET, and FT-IR spectroscopy. The obtained results showed that particles do get fused together at high temperatures, and also the size of particles increases with the increase of annealing temperature. It was concluded that the size of α-alumina synthesized by urea was 10–15 nm, whereas the sample with citric acid yielded α-powder with particle size of 200 nm. Also, the resulting powder prepared by urea exhibited larger surface area (84.2 m²/gm⁻¹) compared to citric acid (39.92 m²/gm⁻¹) at  750 C.