High Surface Area Yttrium Oxide Nanostructures Prepared through Cathodic Electro-synthesis: Development of Facile Preparation Platform and Characterization

We reported here a simple electro-synthesis procedure to synthesize an extremely high specific surface area (SSA) yttrium oxide (Y2O3) nanopowder. The mesoporous (pore diameter, d≈8 nm) Y2O3 powder was deposited by a two-step process involving the pulse cathodic electro-deposition (PC-ED) of yttrium hydroxide film from nitrate bath at 70 oC temperature followed by calcination at 600 C in air for 3 h. The applied pulse parameters i.e. peak current density, on-time and off-time were Ip=25 mA/cm2, ton=1ms and toff=5ms, respectively. The products were characterized by means of scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy methods. The obtained data proved that the fabricated product had pure cubic Y2O3 crystal structure and is composed thin wall-like morphology with SAA value of 243.7 m2/g and mean pore size of 9 nm. From these findings, the PC-ED procedure was proposed for facile fabrication of high-SSA Y2O3 nanopowder.