Formation of Zirconia Titanate Solid Solution from Alkoxides

In the system ZrO₂–TiO₂, ZrTiO₄ solid solutions prepared by the simultaneous hydrolysis of zirconium and titanium alkoxides crystallize at low temperatures from amorphous materials between 30 and 70 mol% TiO₂. As zirconium is substituted for titanium, the solid solutions can be indexed in an orthorhombic unit cell with a and c decreasing linearly from 0.4832 to 0.4778 nm and from 0.5063 to 0.5002 nm, respectively, and b increasing linearly from 0.5401 to 0.5478 nm. The volume of the unit cell decreases continuously with increasing TiO₂ content. At higher temperatures the solid solutions decompose into ZrTiO₄ and either ZrO₂ (monoclinic) or TiO₂ (rutile), depeanding on the starting composition.