Morphological studies of nano-structured BaCO3 produced by a PVA-assisted method

Inorganic materials like BaCO3 are of fundamental interest and technological importance due to their broad application in materials chemistry. It is well documented that the properties of inorganic nano/micro-materials depend strongly on their morphologies.Diethylene glycol (DEG) is a polar solvent which has a reducing ability. Polar solvents have been widely used in materials synthesis [1, 2]. Some polymer-assisted synthesis, such as polyacrylic acid (PAA), polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), and polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP), have been used to process a wide range of nano-materials [3-5]. It implied that these materials either change the surface chemistry of the crystals, or act as a guide reagent for crystal growth.In this paper, synthesis of barium carbonate by a simple PVA assisted method using diethylene glycol (DEG)/distilled water as a solvent has been investigated. Effects of the synthesis conditions on the morphology of the products were also studied.