Metal Nitride and Metal Carbide Nanoparticles by a Soft Urea Pathway

An easy way to produce several metal nitrides and metal carbides at relatively low temperature (800 °C) using simple and mainly nontoxic precursor is presented. The procedure has been shown to be rather general and it was possible to synthesize TiN, VN, NbN, GaN, Mo2N, W2N, CrN, NbC(N), TiC(N), WC, Mo2C, and Cr3C2 nanoparticles using urea or close derivatives as both nitrogen or carbon source and the growth controlling system. In every case, a homogeneous gel-like starting product has been formed that is converted by calcination into the corresponding metal nitride or metal carbide (including mixed species), without any preliminary treatments or further purifications. Samples were characterized by XRD, TEM, SEM, EA, and BET, and the products were shown to be well-defined and rather homogeneous.