Abstract

Water soluble aluminium carboxylates, of use as water based ceramic precursors and as starting materials for the synthesis of other metalloorganic materials, can be prepared in one or two steps from gibbsite [α-Al(OH)₃·3H₂O] and boehmite [Al(O)(OH)]_n. Both starting materials can be used to synthesize aluminium formate [Al(O₂CH)₃] and aluminium hydroxyformate [Al(OH)(O₂CH)₂]. These two compounds can be used to synthesize aluminium lactate [Al{O₂C(OH)CHCH₃}₃] and aluminium methoxyacetate [Al(OH)(O₂CCH₂OCH₃)₂·H₂O]. All of the compounds synthesized were characterized using XRD, TGA, DRIFTS, NMR and wet chemical techniques.