A New Method of Synthesis of Cerium Oxide by Laser Pyrolysis of Solid Cerium Oxalate
Yan Miller, Artem Bagishev, Olga Logutenko, Nikita Peritskii, Sergey Bayev, Alexander TitkovABSTRACT
In this work, cerium oxide (CeO 2 ) was fabricated by scanning of a cerium oxalate layer with a CO 2 laser beam under ambient conditions. The purpose of this study was to investigate the decomposition of cerium oxalate under different laser processing parameters. It was shown that, by controlling laser processing parameters, the formation of pure CeO 2 could be achieved at a laser power of 15–27 W, a laser pulse frequency of 10 kHz, and a scanning speed of 450–1800 mm/s. The resulting powders were examined by scanning and transmission electron microscopy (SEM and TEM), x‐ray diffraction (XRD), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), Fourier transform infrared, and x‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy (FTIR and XPS). X‐ray diffraction analysis confirmed that the cerium oxide particles have a cubic fluorite structure. A decrease in the CeO 2 crystallite size with increasing scanning speed and its increase with increasing laser exposure were observed. The proposed approach does not use toxic reagents and almost prevents waste, thus meeting the principles of green chemistry. In addition, the laser pyrolysis method allows for reduction of the number of manufacturing steps and minimizes energy costs, which makes it promising for commercial manufacturing of SOFC electrolyte layers and photo‐catalysts.