Thermal Decomposition Kinetics of Nano-Sized Chromium(III) Carboxylates

Abstract

The kinetics of thermal decomposition of a few nano-sized trinuclear oxo-centered, carboxylato bridged chromium(III) complexes has been reported on the basis of TG, DSC and DTG studies. It is found that the decomposition occurs in two steps. Following the experimental results a thermal decomposition scheme along with thermal stability order of the complexes under investigation is proposed. The kinetic parameters like activation energy (E_a), pre-exponential factor (A) and activation entropy (DS^#) have been evaluated for each step. Powder XRD data were used to find out the particle size of the complexes which indicated them to be of nano-size.