Tri-component nanostructures of ceria-zirconia-nickel: Investigating the effect of calcination on microstructure

Abstract

Calcination of materials at high temperature could change the physical properties characteristics of the materials due to the sintering and thermal instability. In this work, the basic understanding on the effect of calcination at high temperature on the microstructure of tri-components nanostructured of Ce-Zr-Ni was studied. The nanostructures tri-component materials were synthesized using Microemulsion method without and with calcination process. Narrow size of microemulsion micelles of tri-component system of Ce-Zr-Ni in the range of 5 to 25nm with the dominant size was 11nm was observed for nanostructured Ce-Zr-Ni without calcination. The microstructure was the mixture of crystallite and amorphous phase in cubic structure. The crystallite size and micelle size showed narrow size and identical at about 16nm. Nickel as promoter in Ce-Zr structure was well dispersed and homogeneity dissolved, which is the interstitial solid solution takes place, to form the ternary solid solution. After calcination at 500°C, highly crystalline solid solution of CeZrNiO2 was formed. Reduction of surface area was observed from 169.80 to 139.90 m2/g. However, both samples possess mesoporous properties, which the pore size in range 2 to 50nm.