LAUSR

Abstract The present research aimed to achieve optimum synthesis conditions through the fabrication of nano-crystalline lithium-mica glass-ceramic. An aqueous sol-gel route was applied to synthesize glass-ceramic, and X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) were used for its characterization. At the same time, response surface methodology (RSM) was employed to record and analyze the effective parameters. Heating temperature, stoichiometric deviation and amount of MgF 2 were considered as the effective parameters. “Design Expert” software was used to recognize the optimum conditions, and the following results were obtained: heating temperature = 662.1 °C, stoichiometric deviation = 0.66, and amount of MgF 2  = 6.95%. The results indicated that an excessive increase or decrease in the synthesis parameters influenced the lithium-mica peak intensity negatively. Moreover, excessive increase or decrease in MgF 2 content led to the growth of mica crystallites, whereas increase in the heating temperature and stoichiometric deviation negatively and positively affected the size of mica crystallites, respectively.