Amorphous intermediates and discovery of a kinetic polymorph of BiVO<sub>4</sub> from heating V+Bi+Zn single-source precursors.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 42062268.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-026-71702-7 and PMC identifier 13133244.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Molecular single-source precursors are a promising way of obtaining multi-element extended solids directly. We show that thermal decomposition of well-defined mono-, bi- and trimetallic polyoxovanadates (POVs) proceeds through a series of intermediate amorphous and crystalline species which we characterise using solid-state NMR spectroscopy, pair-distribution function (PDF) analysis and in-situ X-ray diffraction, before forming crystalline V<sub>2</sub>O<sub>5</sub> and BiVO<sub>4</sub> products. This synthetic strategy enables the formation of phases inaccessible using other routes, including a previously unknown polymorph of BiVO<sub>4</sub> which we name β-BiVO<sub>4</sub> due to its similarity to β-SnWO<sub>4</sub>. Local structure information also reveals the temperature dependent incorporation of Zn do pants into BiVO<sub>4</sub>. The study also explores the electrochemical properties of amorphous mixed-valence vanadium oxides as Li-ion battery electrodes. We suggest that careful analysis of the thermal decomposition of molecular species may be a way of obtaining hitherto unknown kinetically stabilised polymorphs and amorphous variants of extended solids.