Investigation of Physical and electrochemical properties of Ni doped CeO2 Thin films: DFT calculation

Abstract

Undoped and Ni-doped thin films of cerium dioxide have been deposited by spray pyrolysis technique on the glass substrate at the optimized temperature (450 ± 5) °C. Thin films Ce1-xNixO2 doped by different concentrations of Ni was characterized by X-ray diffraction. Raman analysis showed a peak at 461 ± 1 cm−1 position for the undoped film, which corresponds to the active mode (F2g mode) of the cubic fluorite structure. SEM images showed that the particles have a uniform spherical shape. EDS data have confirmed all elements (Ce, Ni and O) existence. Optical properties of samples show a decrease in band gap energy with increasing the nickel rate. Cyclic voltammetry indicates that the storage capacity of samples increases as the Ni rate increases. The EIS of CeO2/ITO electrodes displays a small semicircular at high frequency. The theoretical results obtained using WIEN2k match well with the experimental ones.