Thermal decomposition, phase formation and microstructure analysis of surfactant assisted sol-gel derived La₀.₆Sr₀.₄CoO₃-δ material

A single-phase of perovskite-type oxide material can be prepared at a processing temperature relatively lower than 1000 °C through a sol-gel method. However, it is affected by the nature of chemical additives employed during the synthesis process. In the present work, sol-gel derived lanthanum strontium cobaltite, La₀.₆Sr₀.₄CoO₃-δ (LSC64) material is prepared using various non-ionic surfactants namely polyoxyethylene (10) oleyl ether (Brij-97), polyoxyethylene octyl phenyl ether (Triton-X-100) and polyoxyethylene (20) sorbitan monooleate (Tween-80). The prepared powders of the LSC material is subsequently subjected to the thermal decomposition, phase formation and microstructure analysis by a thermal gravimetric analyzer, an X-ray diffractometer and a scanning electron microscope (SEM), respectively. The as-synthesized powders are calcined at different temperatures based on the thermal gravimetric analysis results. X-ray diffractometer results reveal that all of the calcined powders consist of more than 90 % perovskite phase of LSC64 and other secondary phases such as cobalt oxide, lanthanum oxide and strontium carbonate. The Brij-97-based and Tween-80-based calcined powders have morphology of typical clump-like network structure, while the Triton-X-100-based calcined powder has morphology of flake-like network structure.