Preparation of Nd2O3 nanoparticles by ion exchange resin homogenous precipitation method

In the present paper, homogenous precipitation with Nd(NO)3·6H2O and (NH4)2C2O4·2H2O, a strong base anion exchange resin and strong acidic cation exchange resin, respectively, and subsequent calcination of precursors at 700 ℃ were used to synthesize Nd2O3 nanoparticles. In the precipitation from homogeneous solution, the relative supersaturation is always low and the local reagent excesses do not occur because the precipitating agent appears homogeneously throughout the entire solution. In general, homogeneous precipitates are better suited for analysis than precipitates formed by direct addition of a reagent. The concentration of reactant, reaction temperature and time are important factors which dominate the morphology and structure size of the Nd2O3 nanoparticles. Assay results showed that between 40 and 50 ℃, when the ion exchange resin was added tardily with continuous stirring and mixing, the precursor could be obtained after being filtered, washed, and dried at 80 ℃. The Nd2O3 sample was obtained via calcination of the precursor at 700 ℃ for 1.5 h. The morphology, size and distribution of the precursors and samples were characterized by TG-DTA, XRD, TEM, HR-TEM, SAED and BET techniques. The forming mechanism of homogenous precipitation was discussed detailedly. The results indicated that the Nd2O3 nanocrystal prepared with the present method belonged to hexagonal crystal system, and its average diameter was 26-32 nm with better decentralization. The electron diffraction pattern which had a clear and regular lattice of Nd2O3 confirmed that the particles were monocrystals. The specific surface area of sample a and sample b was 42.57 and 29.43 m2·g-1, respectively. The ion exchange resin homogenous precipitation method has such advantages as low cost, environmentally benign innocuity of the starting reagents, the simplicity of the synthetic route, easy recycling of ion exchange resin and so on, making it a promising method to be scaled up for industrial production.