The preparation of tridymite crystal by chemical processing

A new method for the synthesis of tridymite is reported in this article. When amorphous SiO2 is treated with ethylene glycol for 3 h at 196°C and then filtered and washed with distilled water, tridymite is obtained. The transmission electron microscopy equipped with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) are used to characterize the crystal materials. The EDX shows the material is pure silica and The XRD pattern shows this silica is tridymite phase. In order to study the formation process of tridymite, all sorts of reaction conditions are discussed in detail. The products obtained at different conditions are characterized by XRD techniques. Finally, a reasonable mechanism is proposed.