Preparation of crystalline inorganic materials

On the other hand, we beheve there is an emerging body of results which indicate that PLD may revolutionize the synthesis of complex inorganic thin film materials. A imique feature of PLD is that the source material is evaporated (ablated) in a nonequilibriirm process such that material is evaporated at the stoichiometry of the bulk. Hence, it is possible to prepare thin films of incongmently melting sohds that have a stoichiometry characteristic of the solid phase prior to melting. For example, PLD has been the most effective method for preparation of crystalline YBa2Cu307... 

When crystalline solids are prepared in an amorphous form they acquire other properties. Glasses are much easier to shape than crystalline inorganic materials such as ceramics. The amorphous modification can be made from the crystalline parent solid by intense, repeated deformations (e.g., in a ball mill), by means of an ion bombardment, by mechanical shock, or by low-temperature vapor deposition. Such... 

The sol-gel process is the name given to a number of processes in which a solution, or sol, undergoes a sol-gel transition. In this broadest sense, the term sol-gel refers to the preparation of inorganic oxides by wet chemical methods, irrespective of final form product—monolith, crystalline, or amorphous (1). Using sol-gel materials for mechanical entrapment of enzymes permitted stabilization of the proteins, tertiary structure owing to the tight gel network (2). Moreover, the easy insertion of substituent groups into... 

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