Influence of Precipitation Post-treatments on Properties of Antimony-doped Tin Oxide Powders

Using inorganic reagents as starting materials,nanometer particles of antimony doped tin oxide (ATO) are prepared by the co-precipitation technique.The influence of precipitation post-treatment on the properties of these particles is discussed.The precipitations are washed in three methods:(a) the precipitations in a cake state washed by water,(b) the precipitations in a dispersion state washed by water,(c) the precipitations washed by ethanol after (b).The transmission electron microscopy(TEM) results show that powders prepared by(c) are in the best dispersion state.Several surfactants are added to the precipitations to prepare powders with good dispersity.The TEM results show that nonionic surfactants such as polyethylene glycol and polyvinyl pyrrolidon K30 can make the powders in monodispersion, however,ionic surfactants like sodium dodecyl sulfonate and sodium oleic acid cannot get the powders in good dispersion.The X-ray diffraction results show that the crystallinity increases with the increase of calcining temperatures. The replacement of a Snby a Sb would take place when the temperature is over 310℃。