Investigação da formação da fase óxido e estudo da influência da microestrutura e morfologia nas propriedades eletrocrômicas de filmes finos de Nb2O5.
Abstract
Nb2O5 is known by your capacity of optical absorption variation, which it happens due
to reduction and small ions intercalation, such as Li+, double process. In this work, Nb2O5 electrochromic films were produced by Pechini method and deposited by dip-coating. Firstly, the composition variables effect of the oxide
precursor solution it was investigated by thermal analysis measure. TG and DSC techniques were used to monitoring the organic part degradation process
until to the oxide formation. It was observed that both variables, citric acid concentration and niobium concentration, to exercise great influence in the polymeric precursor complex. The composition variables and the calcination
temperature effects were studied by different techniques, such as: cyclic voltammetry in LiClO4/CH3CN solution, in situ UV-Vis
spectrophotometry, MEV and XRD. This study was realized based to Factorial Design methodology, and us allowed to direction the following
stages of work. It was observed that changes in the variables, leads to important changes in the morphological and structural properties and,
consequently, in the Nb2O5 films electro-optical properties. The variable that showed largest effect was the citric acid/ethylene glycol molar ratio, which is responsible for the polymeric net formation. The film crystallinity influence
was investigated in more details and one was observed the relationship between the crystalline structure and the Li+ intercalation/extraction process reversibility. A great decrease of electrochemical answer was observed in
function of the cyclicality for films treated to 400 ºC and 450ºC. However, with the calcination temperature increases this effect practically does not occur. XRD studies showed that to 400ºC the material is amorphous, evolving to hexagonal phase (500ºC), and, to 600ºC the ortorrhombic phase prevails. The transmittance variation, as well as, the coloration efficiency increases
with the temperature increase. Another important stage of this work was the study of addition of different dopants effect on film electrochromic properties. Nb2O5 was doped with TiO2, SnO2, ZrO2 and CeO2 in concentrations between 0.1 and 10 mol%. In all cases, it was observed an increase of electrochemical and optical properties. However, for higher dopant concentration, it should probably happen the segregation of a second phase, once the intercalation charges and coloration efficiency values decrease. ZrO2 showed be the best dopant in 2.0 mol% concentration.