Mechanochemical activation of CeO2 in order to boost physicochemical properties for catalytic applications.

RINAUDO, MATÍAS G.; CADUS, LUIS E.; MORALES, M. ROXANA

Conferencia; 20. 4th International Electronic Conference on Applied Sciences; 2024

Mechanochemical activation, by means of high-energy ball milling, was applied to CeO2as a strategy to enhance its physicochemical properties. Different milling times were screened toevaluate their effect on ceria. Fluorite-type structure of cerianite was maintained in all cases, nomatter the amount of energy introduced by milling process, as observed by X-ray Diffraction (XRD).A decrease in crystallite sizes along with a consequent increase in Specific Surface Area (SBET) wereobserved by XRD and N2 sorption (BET method). Pore diameters and total pore volumes were alsoin line with the duration of CeO2 milling. Moreover, redox properties and oxygen mobility studiedby H2-Temperature Programmed Reduction (H2- TPR) showed an increase in reducibility with millingtime, including signals of both bulk and surface ceria, due to the greater number of defectsand/or oxygen vacancies achieved by mechanochemical activation. Obtained features could play anessential role in terms of metal-support interaction, reactants adsorption and/or oxygen supply duringcatalytic reactions. Thus, high-energy ball milling becomes a useful, simple and green methodfor the design of materials with catalytic applications.