Journal of Materials Science, Vol.46, No.7, 2105-2111, 2011
Synthesis of copper/chromium oxide composites by a chemical processing method
The aim of this paper is to synthesize a copper/chromium oxide composite material. The use of a chemical processing method like the Pechini method is the best approach to control the chemistry and the microstructure. Nevertheless, the standard Pechini method has to be modified to obtain this specific type of composite. In this work, we have adapted two steps. Firstly we have eliminated the step involving ethylene glycol and secondly a reduction step has been added at the end. The new method is now capable of obtaining a Cu/Cr2O3 composite with specific stoichiometric ratios and a grain size ranging from 0.1 to 1 mu m. We have used chemical and microstructural analyses to validate this work.