Bench scale production of pure nanocrystalline molybdenum nitride through solid-gas phase reduction

Solid-Gas phase reduction is an attractive method to produce high surface area, mesoporous powders, as well as pure product. Disadvantage of this method is low amount of product. Increasing the amount of precursor in quartz reactor causes the accumulation of reaction products and results in hydrothermal sintering. Therefore, the diameter of reactor was increased, and it allowed to increase the precursor and also to prevent the hydrothermal sintering. The products were investigated by XRD, BET, SEM and TEM. The surface area of mesoporous powder, from 7 g loaded precursor, was 112 m2/g and crystallite size was about 10 nm. Increasing the precursor up to 30 g, under controlled program, resulted in lower surface area, but still above 105 m2/g. The pore volume was 72.36 cm3/g, quite suitable for catalytic applications.