Heterometal Alkoxides as Precursors in the Sol-Gel Process

University of Allahabad, Allahabad-211 002
Manuscript received 13 September 1993

The synthesis of bimetallic alkoxides has been followed by the preparation of intriguingly stable heterometal alkoxides containing three or four different metal atoms in the same molecular species, which has led to the possibility of molecularly designing a single source precursor suited to the composition of the targeted final ceramic. This has been made feasible by the extraordinary stability of the framework of heterometal alkoxides, which appears to remain intact during the initial hydrolysis reactions in the S-G process. The characterisation (by sophisticated physicochemical techniques including X-Ray crystal structure elucidation in some cases) of heterometal alkoxides appears to have added a new dimension to heterometal coordination systems which appear to be uniquely stable without the presence of metal-metal bonds or auxiliary ligands like CO, etc., enerally required for stabilising polymetallic systems known so far.