Preliminary Study of Photoelectrochemical Properties of Electrosyntetized Cerium Dioxide (CeO2) to Pollutant Treatment
Authors: Molina Lozano Alberto , Cortes Montañez Maria Teresa 
Published: July 2022

1. Introduction

In this work a systematic procedure to synthetize of cerium dioxide and evaluation and its photoelectrochemical properties for dye degradation in aqueous media is shown. First, electrochemical synthesis of CeO2 methodology is presented as function of annealing temeprature and concentration of Ce3+ precursors in the plating. Next, Raman spectra and FTIR analysis were presented to evaluate structural properties of films. Lineal sweep voltammetry (LSV) and chronoamperometry (CA) results are shown to evaluate the photocurrent and its stability of CeO2 and finally all the results were analyzed in function of excitons production, charge separation and recombination phenomena.

2. Methodology

2.1.
Electrochemical synthesis of CeO2

First, cerium hydroxide (Ce(OH)3) was obtained from a CeCl3.7H2O solution (5 and 25 mM) with 0,05 M of NaNO3 as support electrolyte by applying of a constant potential of -1,2 V vs AgCl during 300 s to an FTO electrode (1,3 x 0,6 cm). A reference electrode (Ag/AgCl 3,0 M and a Pt wire as a counter electrode were used in the electrochemical cell connected to a potenciostat-galvanostat AUTOLAB N65 Series. After deposition of cerium hydroxide form, the FTO substrates were alienated at different temperatures (200 – 700 oC) for 1 hour to obtain the oxide cerium form. Finally, FTO photoelectrodes were dried with air and stored at room temperature.

2.2. Photoelectrochemical characterization of CeO2 films

LSV and CA were used to evaluate the photo-response and stability of produced photocurrent of CeO2 photoanodes. In the LSV experiment, a range of potential from +0,5 V to 1,2 V was used with a sweep of 10 mV/s. Meanwhile, a bias potential of +1,2 V during 300 s with light-dark cycles of 30 s was used in CA experiments. A system of three electrode (FTO-CeO2 as a working electrode, Ag/AgCl 3,0 M and a Pt wire) were used in an electrochemical with a quartz window. The cell was irradiated with a light source of 100 mW/cm2. The solution of the electrochemical cell was Na2SO4 0,1 M.

3. Results

Electrochemical measurements show that there is a great influence in the temperature treatment to obtain high photocurrent using CeO2 photoanodes. Besides, CeO2 increase its photoelectroactivity when small concentration of Ce3+ precursor is used in the electrochemical formation of hydroxide. This could be attributed to a decrease of size particle and therefore a favorable change of band gap of CeO2. Stability of photocurrent of CeO2 photoelectrode changes slowly across the time this process could be product of electronic saturation in the process of charge separation or structural changes during the photoelectrocatalytic process due to applying of potential bias.

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