Morphology and Structure of Oxide Ceramics Based Single Nano Sized Composites

Abstract

We have today the technology to grow and control structures on the nanometer scale, which has opened the possibility to fabricate novel materials with unique physical and chemical properties. For example, gas condensation has previously been utilized to produce stable nonstoichiometric oxides by first synthesizing metallic single nano sized particles followed by controlled oxidation. It has been shown that this single nano sized composites exhibits significantly improved catalytic properties compared to its coarse-grained counterpart. The larger portion of surface atoms in these exceptionally small crystallites can explain, because of a surface energy relaxation process, the preserved reduced state.