Barium incorporated zirconium dioxide nanostructures synthesized by sol-gel route and investigation of their structural, thermal and spectroscopic characteristic in the stabilized tetragonal phase

Zirconium dioxide (ZrO2) is one of the hypothetical ceramic materials, which exhibits appealing thermal, mechanical, electrical, and optical qualities as well as strong oxygen ion conductivity. In this work, ZrO2 nanostructure doped with various Barium ratios using a sol-gel approach was successfully prepared. The impact of increasing the percentage of barium integrated in zirconium dioxide (BaxZrO2) (x = 1%, 2%, 5%, 6%, 8%, and 10%) on the temperature at which a tetragonal phase form was examined. X-ray diffraction patterns (XRD) were utilized to identify the structure of the prepared samples. XRD patterns showed that the incorporation of Ba into the ZrO2 lattice stabilized the tetragonal phase up to 900 °C. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) was used to analyze the phase composition, and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) was employed to study and validate the thermal analysis. Furthermore, images obtained using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) depict the surface morphology of the prepared specimens. To find the enhanced band gap, ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy (UV-vis) was also used.