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Updated: Jan 6, 2026

Synthesis and Exfoliation of Discotic Zirconium Phosphates to Obtain Colloidal Liquid Crystals
Published on: May 25, 2016
Zirconium Phosphate: The Pathway from Turbostratic Disorder to Crystallinity
Aida Contreras-Ramirez1, Songsheng Tao2, Gregory S Day1
1Department of Chemistry , Texas A&M University , College Station , Texas 77843 , United States.
Abstract:
We show how the structural order of nanocrystalline zirconium phosphates (ZrP) is tuned by the synthetic methods and conditions through the use of synchrotron X-ray atomic pair distribution function analysis. With different synthetic route and different phosphoric acid concentrations in the synthesis, the product zirconium phosphates vary from turbostratically disordered nanoscale structures to fully ordered ones. We show that a change in the structural order leads to different ion-exchange properties. The samples are characterized using multiple techniques, including powder X-ray diffraction, ion exchange, thermogravimetric analysis, transmission electron microscopy, fast neutron activation analysis, solid-state NMR spectroscopy, IR spectroscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.
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