Uniformity's influence of silica xerogel on synthesis efficiency of SiC nanorods by carbothermal reduction

Silica xerogels containing nanocarbon were milled for several hours before the carbothermal reduction processing. The formation of SiC nanorods was investigated at different annealing temperatures. It is shown that the formation temperature of SiC nanorods can be decreased if the powder size of milled silica xerogels is lower than 100 nm. The morphology, structure and production efficiency of synthesized SiC were determined by scanning electron microscopy SEM, X-ray diffraction XRD and thermo-gravimetric analysis TGA measurements. It is evident that production efficiency of synthesized SiC nanorods clearly depends on uniformity of precursor materials.