Abstract
Nanocrystalline, uniform, dense, and adherent cerium oxide (CeO 2) thin films have been successfully deposited by a simple and cost effective spray pyrolysis technique. CeO 2 films were deposited at low substrate and annealing temperatures of 350 °C and 500 °C, respectively. Films were characterized by differential thermal analysis, X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy; two probe resistivity method and impedance spectroscopy. X-ray diffraction analysis revealed the formation of single phase, well crystalline thin films with cubic fluorite structure. Crystallite size was found to be in the range of 10–15 nm. AFM showed formation of smooth films with morphological grain size 27 nm. Films were found to be highly resistive with room temperature resistivity of the order of 10 7 Ω cm. Activation energy was calculated and found to be 0.78 eV. The deposited film showed high oxygen ion conductivity of 5.94 × 10 −3 S cm −1 at 350 °C. Thus, the deposited material shows a potential application in intermediate temperature solid oxide fuel cells (IT-SOFC) and might be useful for μ-SOFC and industrial catalyst applications.
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