Electrochemical Growth of Ce1-xZrxO2 Solid Solution Flower-Like Nanostructures and Their Optical and Magnetic Properties

In this paper, we first reported the synthesis of the Ce1-xZrxO2 flower-like nanostructures via the electrochemical deposition route, which represents a simple, quick, and economical method. By controlling the electrodepositon conditions, various Ce1-xZrxO2 flower-like structures can be easily prepared. The synthesized Ce1-xZrxO2 was characterized by an energy-dispersive spectrometer (EDS), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), a transmission electron microscope (TEM), and X-ray diffractometry (XRD), and the results showed the prepared Ce1-xZrxO2 samples exhibited cubic structures only. The porosity of Ce1-xZrxO2 (x = 0.5) flower-like nanostructures was characterized by nitrogen sorption analysis using standard Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) techniques, and they show a high specific surface area of 101 m(2)/g. The UV-vis absorption spectrum of the as-deposited Ce1-xZrxO2 (x = 0.5) samples was measured, and it shows a broadband at about 250 similar to 330 nm, which can be attributed to the overlap of O2--> Ce4+ and O2--> Ce3+ charge transfer transitions. Furthermore, the PL spectrum and magnetic properties of Ce1-xZrxO2 flower-like nanostructures were also studied in this paper.