Part One Sol–Gel Chemistry and Methods 1
Sol–Gel Chemistry and Methods
Jul 20, 2023
The structure of oxide glasses produced from melts consists of dense amorphous
networks of connected polyhedra. An alternative way to obtain such networks is
a “bottom-up” approach, that is, connecting molecular building blocks such
as SiO4 tetrahedra and TiO6 octahedra with each other in a stepwise manner.
Contrary to glass formation from melts, where the thermodynamically favorable
crystalline structure is avoided by fast enough cooling, fast and (nearly)
irreversible reactions are the reason for the amorphous network structures in
sol–gel materials
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Sol–gel materials are therefore metastable solids that are formed in kinetically controlled reactions from molecular precursors, which constitute the building blocks for the later materials. An immediate consequence is that all reaction parameters, including the precursor properties, have a decisive influence on the structure and thus the properties of sol–gel materials
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