Non-isothermal kinetic study on the decomposition of Zn acetate-based sol-gel precursor

Abstract

The paper presents a non-isothermal kinetic study of the decomposition of Zn acetate-based gel precursors for ZnO thin films, based on the thermogravimetric (TG) data. The evaluation of the dependence of the activation energy (E) on the mass loss (Δm) using the isoconversional methods (Friedman (FR), Flynn-Wall-Ozawa (FWO) and Kissinger-Akahira-Sunose (KAS)) has been presented in a previous paper. It was obtained that the sample dried at 125°C for 8 h exhibits the activation energy independent on the heating rate for the second decomposition step. In this paper the invariant kinetic parameter (IKP) method is used for evaluating the invariant activation parameters, which were used for numerically evaluation of the function of conversion. The value of the invariant activation energy is in a good agreement with those determined by isoconversional methods. In order to determine the kinetic model, IKP method was associated with the criterion of coincidence of the kinetic parameters for all heating rates. Finally, the following kinetic triplet was obtained: E=91.7 (±0.1) kJ mol−1, lnA(s−1)=16.174 (±0.020) and F1 kinetic model.