Effects of annealing parameters on phase, structure and thermochromic properties of VO2 (M) derived from nanostructured VO2(B)

• Main Authors: Barra Hamdi Muhyuddin, Chen Soo Kien, Tamchek Nizam, Talib Zainal Abidin, Lee Oon Jew, Tan Kar Ban
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Sciendo 2020-12-01
• Series: Materials Science-Poland
• Subjects: annealing; hydrothermal synthesis; thermochromic; vanadium dioxide
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.2478/msp-2020-0071

Synthesis of thermochromic VO2 (M) was successfully done by annealing hydrothermally-prepared VO2 (B) at different temperatures and times. Conversion of the metastable VO2 (B) to the thermochromic VO2 polymorph was studied using thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA) under N2 atmosphere. Moreover, the phase and morphology of the synthesized samples were studied using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), respectively. Accordingly, the XRD scans of all the annealed samples exhibited the presence of monoclinic VO2 (M), while the FE-SEM images of the samples showed the formation of nanorods and nanospheres, particularly those heated at high temperatures (650 °C and 700 °C). Meanwhile, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) was used to measure the phase transition temperature (τc), hysteresis, and enthalpy of the prepared VO2. Based on these results, all samples displayed a τc of about 66 °C. However, the hysteresis was high for the samples annealed at lower temperatures (550 °C and 600 °C), while the enthalpy was very low for samples heated at lower annealing time (1.5 h and 1 h). These findings showed that crystallinity and nanostructure formation affected the thermochromic properties of the samples. In particular, the sample annealed at 650 °C showed better crystallinity and improved thermochromic behavior.