Triethanolamine Molybdate, a New Polymeric Precursor for Molybdenum Nitride

Nitrides remain a relatively unexplored class of materials primarily due to the difficulties associated with their synthesis and characterization. Several synthetic routes, including high temperature reactions, microwave assisted synthesis, and the use of plasmas, to prepare binary and ternary nitrides have been explored. Transition metal nitrides form a class of materials with unique physical properties, which give them varied applications, as high temperature ceramics, magnetic materials, superconductors or catalysts. They are commonly prepared by high temperature conventional processes, but alternative synthetic approaches have also been explored, more recently, which utilize moderate temperature condition. Transition metal nitrides particularly, molybdenum nitride, niobium nitride, and tungsten nitride have important applications as catalyst in hydrodenitridation reactions. These nitrides have been traditionally synthesized using high temperature nitridation treatments of the oxides. The nitridation temperatures are very high (> 800- 1000 oC). The aim of our work is to synthesize molybdenum nitride by a simple, low-temperature route. The method involves pyrolysis of a polymeric precursor, which was prepared from the condensation reaction between triethanolamine and molybdic acid. The melting point of the product is 180oC. The polymeric precursor and its pyrolyzed products are characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). X-ray diffraction shows that molybdenum nitride (MoN) obtained from this method has hexagonal crystal structure. MoN is obtained by this method at very low temperature (~ 400 oC).