Facile Synthesis of CeO2/SnO2 N-N Heterostructure

Abstract

Cerium oxide and tin oxide nanocomposites (CeO2-SnO2 NCs) were successfully synthesized via a simple co-precipitation method. The structure and properties of the synthesized materials were characterized using several X-ray and electron-based techniques including XRD, FE-SEM, TEM, EDS and BET to unravel the structure, morphology, element composition and specific surface area. The XRD and BET results showed that the NCs have the characteristic crystalline structures of SnO2 and CeO2-SnO2 NCs, and high specific surface area (66.45 and 86.29 m2/g), respectively. Amorphous phase of CeO2 and SnO2 were not found in XRD patterns. EDS analysis confirms the absence of all element composition and the FE-SEM and TEM analysis observed as particles having the clear spherical morphologies with the average particle size of of SnO2 and CeO2-SnO2 NCs was about 13 and 10 nm, respectively.