Synthesis and characterization of yttrium-doped mesoporous zirconia

Recently, more and more interests have been focused on a novel kind of nanostructured material-ordered mesoporous material. In this paper, yttrium can be successfully incorporated into the framework of mesoporous zirconia by a surfactant-assisted method and a post-treatment process. The X-ray powder diffraction, HRTEM, EDS, photoluminescent (PL) analysis and UV-vis measurement were adopted for the characterization of the synthesized materials. The results show that yttrium has been homogeneously incorporated into the framework of mesoporous zirconia. The prepared yttrium-doped sample shows a distinctive blue luminescence under excitation at room temperature. It is believed that this PL response is related to the defects of oxygen vacancies in mesoporous zirconia due to yttrium incorporating into the framework of zirconia.