Citrate - Nitrate route for the synthesis and characterization of TAG using sol-gel techniques

Terbium Aluminum Garnet (TAG) is an important optically active material and is one of the best materials known for the fabrication of optical isolators. TAG has a large Verdet constant and has good transmission in the region of 350–1500 nm of the electromagnetic spectrum. It is also known that TAG melts incongruently at 1840°C. This makes efficient synthesis of TAG important and challenging and forms the motivation of the present work to develop techniques for the synthesis of TAG at lower temperatures. In the present work we report the synthesis of TAG using sol-gel techniques following the citrate-nitrate route. The prepared sample is sintered at various temperatures in presence of air and characterized using X-ray diffraction, FT-IR spectroscopy, energy dispersive X-ray Analysis and the morphology is observed using the scanning electron microscopy.