Phase composition, morphology, properties and improved catalytic activity of hydrothermally-derived manganese-doped ceria nanoparticles.

Manganese-doped ceria nanoparticles were prepared by hydrothermal synthesis and the prepared samples were thermally treated at 500 °C for 2 h. The samples were investigated using x-ray diffraction (XRD), high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM), energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS), Nadsorption and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). XRD revealed that nanocrystalline ceria is the main phase in all samples, while a romanechite-like phase (NaMnO) appears in the sample doped with 30% of Mn. TEM coupled with EDS exposed the presence of the same phase in the sample doped with 20% Mn. While ceria particles have spherical morphology and particle size ranging from 4.3 to 9.2 nm, the rare crystals of the romanechite-like phase adopt a tubular morphology with a length of at least 1m. However, the decrease in the ceria lattice constant and the EDS spectra of the ceria nanoparticles clearly indicate that a substantial amount of manganese entered the ceria crystal lattice. Manganese doping has a beneficial impact on the specific surface area of ceria. XPS measurements reveal a decrease in the Ce/Ce + Cecontent in the doped samples which is replaced by Mn. Moreover, a drastic increase in adsorbed oxygen is observed in the doped samples which is the consequence of the increase in Mnspecies that promotes oxygen migrations to the surface of the sample. Compared to the pure sample, the doped samples showed significantly higher catalytic activity for the process of toluene oxidation.