Optical and magnetic properties of fluoride-doped CeO2 obtained by an oxidative insertion method

In the present study, we generated a fluoride-doped CeO2 sample through the molten hydroxide flux promoted oxidative insertion approach using CeF3 as the precursor. We analyzed the results and compared them with pure CeO2 prepared by the same approach starting from Ce(NO3)(3). High-resolution powder X-ray diffraction, FTIR, and Raman spectral measurements confirmed both samples' fluorite structure. The CeO2 resulted from the oxidative flux treatment of CeF3 had 18 at.% of fluoride ion-doped in it. The optical band gap narrowed marginally from 2.98 to 2.88 eV upon fluoride doping in CeO2. The blue emission intensity decreased with fluoride doping, indicating a reduction in oxygen vacancies compared to undoped CeO2. F-doped CeO2 showed ferromagnetic behavior with magnetization, H-c, and M-r values higher than the undoped sample. A higher concentration of Ce3+ and a lower concentration of oxygen vacancies were the consequences of fluoride doping in CeO2 by this synthetic method.

Automated summary

In this study, fluoride-doped CeO2 samples were successfully synthesized using the molten hydroxide flux promoted oxidative insertion approach. The optical and magnetic properties of the fluoride-doped CeO2 were found to be different from pure CeO2.