The preparation of a homogeneous mixture of (Al2O3 + C) precursor is the key step for the successful synthesis of AlN powders by the carbothermal reduction and nitridation method. In the present work, the homogeneous (Al2O3 + C) precursor prepared by a modified low temperature combustion synthesis (MLCS) method by using aluminum nitrate, glucose, and urea as materials exhibited high reaction activity. Furthermore, in order to absolutely control the MLCS process and continuously improve the properties of (Al2O3 + C) precursor, the reaction model of preparing precursors from various molar ratios of urea to aluminum nitrate (U/Al) was investigated by carrying out thermodynamic calculation and by performing experiments in the present work. The whole process was found to involve various phenomena. First, the type and amount of various generated nitrogen-containing gases (N2, NO, N2O, N2O3, N2O4, and NO2) vary with the change of U/Al during combustion process. Second, under the present experimental condition of ignition temperature, the decomposition reaction of aluminum nitrate is more prone to occur than the combustion reaction of urea. Third, the real reaction system with U/Al = 2.5 reaches the highest combustion temperature which is well consistent with the propellant chemical theory. The occurrence of above phenomena was discussed in detail. Moreover, the reaction mechanism of synthesizing precursor from U/Al = 1 with high reaction activity was investigated by using various techniques such as FTIR, XRD, and DTA.
Keywords: (Al2O3 + C) precursor; modified low temperature combustion synthesis; nanomaterials; nitrogen-containing gases; reaction model and mechanism.