Insight into the structural characterization of pure and Zr-doped hydrothermally synthesized cerium oxide nanoparticles

• Published in: Materials research express Vol. 6; no. 10; pp. 105022 - 105038
• Main Authors: Mazhar, Muhammad Ehsan, Bakhtawar, Samia, Manzoor Rana, Anwar, Usmani, Muhammad Nauman, Akhtar, Naeem, Abbas, Waseem, Khan, Khalil, Ahmad, Javed
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: IOP Publishing 09.08.2019
• Subjects: electrical resistivity; hydrothermal synthesis; nanoparticles; scanning electron microscopy; x-ray diffraction
• ISSN: 2053-1591; 2053-1591
• DOI: 10.1088/2053-1591/ab0f5f

The hydrothermal synthesis of pure and zirconium (Zr)-doped cerium oxide nanomaterials (with doping concentration of 3% and 5% of Zr) is being presented in this investigation. The structural and morphological characterizations are carried out by means of x-ray diffraction (XRD) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). XRD analyses exhibit the formation of pure face-centered-cubic (FCC) structure having lattice constant ranging between 5.413 85-5.411 14 Å. SEM studies divulge random and non-uniform distribution of a few nanometer sized crystallites in all the synthesized materials with minute variations in their sizes. Furthermore, the temperature dependent dc-electrical characterizations in the 300-393 K temperature range demonstrate gradual increase in conductivity with increasing temperature depicting semiconductor type behaviour but a small decrease with rising Zr content in the synthesized nanomaterials. The present study reveals that Zr-doped ceria nanoparticles appear to be suitable for applications such as photocatalysis, resistive switching memory etc.