Structure and Electric Conductivity of Ce-doped Bi₂O₃ Electrolyte Synthesized by Reverse Titration Chemical Coprecipitation

Abstract

Ce-doped Bi₂O₃ nanopowders were prepared by reverse titration chemical coprecipitation from Bi³⁺ and Ce⁴⁺ containing aqueous solution. Techniques of X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopic (TEM) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) were employed to characterize the as-synthesized materials. The XRD patterns indicated that the peaks can be easily indexed to β-Bi₂O₃ and no diffraction peaks of Ce or other impurity phases were detected in the prepared samples. The calculated average crystalline size decreased from 31.72 to 11.96 nm when the Ce content increased from 1 wt% to 10 wt%. The morphology changed from flake-like into the spherical-like with increase in Ce content. The electric conductivity of Ce-doped Bi₂O₃ electrolyte was also investigated by two probe DC method. Conductivity analysis exhibited that the rate of conductivity increased with increasing Ce²⁺ ratio, when the Ce concentration was up to 5 wt%, the as-synthesized Ce-doped Bi₂O₃ electrolyte showed the maximum value of conductivity(0.295 S·cm^–1).

Keywords

Ce-doped / Bi₂O₃ / reverse titration / microstructure / electric conductivity