Al
3+, Fe
3+ and Cr
3+ are similar in their chemical properties, and their coordination number to O
2- is six. Their ortho-phosphates are able to have an isostructure with SiO
2, because the ratios of the average ionic radii of the positive ions to that of oxygen ion are nearly equal to each other, -0.30, 0.31, 0.35 and 0.35 for SiSiO
4, AlPO
4, FePO
4 and CrPO
4 respectively. In practice, the quartz type, the tridymite type and the cristobalite type, have been found for AlPO
4 and only the quartz type for FePO
4, but the isostructure with SiO
2 is not yet known even now for CrPO
4. The solid solutions between AlPO
4-FePO
4 and AlPO
4-CrPO
4, which were synthesized above 1100°C, were studied in this paper.
In the AlPO
4-FePO
4 system perfect solid solutions were made, and their crystals had the structure of the cristobalite type and the quartz type when [Al
3+/Fe
3+]≥3/7, and ≤2/8 respectively.
In the range [Al
3+]=0.55-0.3 molar fraction, the crystals were in the transition state from the cristobalite type to the quartz type.
In the AlPO
4-CrPO
4 system the crystal structure was of the cristobalite type with the exception that β-CrPO
4 was isolated when [Al
3+/Cr
3+] was below 8/2.
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