Synthesis and Characterization of CeO-ZnO Nanocomposites

A novel CeO-ZnO nanocomposite has been synthesized by a sol-gel method based on polymeric network of polyvinyl alcohol(PVA). In this work mixed solvent of 50:50 ethanol water was used to dissolve cerium nitrate,nickel nitrate and PVA. The mixture was heated to 80OC to form a homogeneous gel solution. The obtained gel was slowly heated to evaporate the solvent to form a hard homogeneous gel. The hard gel was calcinated at temperature 600OC for 4 hours and 8 hours and converted into nanocomposite. The prepared nanocomposites have been characterized using X-Ray Diffraction(XRD), FTIR, UV-VIS. In the observed spectral features, the peak position, intensity and bandwidth were related to some structural properties of investigated samples. The size of nano particles of CeO-ZnO nano composites heated at 600O C for 4 hours and 8 hours using Scherrer Formula comes out to be 5.4 nm and 6.8 nm. CeO-ZnO nanocomposites shows increase in absorption when it goes from UV region to visible region.