Polyhedral Shapes of CeO2 Nanoparticles

Ceria nanoparticles are a widely used nanomaterial for applications in catalysts, fuel cell, and microelectronics. An important factor that influences the performance of CeO 2 is the particle shape. In this paper, a systematic study has been carried out to determine the shapes of CeO 2 nanoparticles. For particles in the size range of 3−10 nm, the particle shape is dominated by truncated octahedral that is defined by the 100 and 111 facets. The fastest growth of the nanoparticles along 〈100〉 results in the disappearance of the 100 facets; thus, the large size CeO 2 particles are dominated by the octahedral shape with flat surfaces. The nanoparticles agglomerate by minimizing the interface energy with the formation of a lattice matched “coherent interface”. The faceted shape also results in the textured distribution of nanoparticles deposited onto a substrate surface, with a preferred orientation of 110. These structural characteristics are likely to affect their performance in technological applications.