Synthesis and tuning the structure, morphological, optical, and photoluminescence properties of heterostructure cerium oxide and tin oxide nanocomposites

Abstract

A series of Ce1-xSnxO2 (x = 0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.7, 1) nanocomposite heterostructure have been synthesized by a hydrothermal technique. The structure, composition, and morphology of samples were systematically specified by XRD, XPS, HRTEM, and FESEM. XRD manifests the composite oxide materials which comprise well-separated phases of nanocrystalline nature from both the constitutive oxides at ratios 0.2, 0.3, and 0.4. XPS studies detected the various ionization states of Ce3+/Ce4+, Sn4+, Sn2+ that were existed in the combined oxides and showed strong interactions among CeO2 and SnO2. Besides, the addition of SnO2 into CeO2 raised the amount of Ce3+ and Oα species. The HRTEM investigation illustrated the combined morphology of uniformly scattered spherical shapes observed at CTAB supported CeO2/SnO2nanocomposites. The UV effects provided that the absorption edge was shifted to higher energies in all samples described by DRS. It was found that PL spectra are very sensitive to preparation and processing conditions. From XPS, UV, and PL results of the CeO2/SnO2 nanocomposites, it is realized that the composites are promising for catalysis and optoelectronic devices.