Formation and thermal decomposition of cerium-organic precursor for nanocrystalline cerium oxide powder synthesis

A soft solution method for synthesizing nanocrystalline CeO₂ powders via formation of cerium citrate compounds with subsequent thermal decomposition was studied. Increasing calcinations temperature could result in a larger crystalline size, while increasing the citric acid content resulted in the powders with less agglomeration. Using this method, the CeO₂ particles with a crystalline size of about 4 nm could be obtained. Initial study demonstrated that the precursor prepared with polyacrlic acid resulted in the powders with a crystalline size of about 20-30 nm.