High-temperature XRD study of the tetragonal-cubic phase transition in nanocrystalline, compositionally homogeneous ZrO2-CeO2 solid solutions

R.O. FUENTES; D.G. LAMAS; L.M. ACUÑA; I.O. FÁBREGAS; M.E. FERNÁNDEZ DE RAPP; N.E. WALSÖE DE RECA; A.F. CRAIEVICH

2005 Activity Report of the Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory

Laboratorio Nacional de Luz Sincrotron

Año: 2006 p. 680 - 680

1518-0204

Synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction is a powerful tool for the investigation of the crystal structure of materials, which is the key for understanding their physical properties. Several examples can be found in the literature exploiting the high-resolution of synchrotron X-ray diffraction setups in order to separate overlapped Bragg peaks. Differently, in the present work, we took advantage of the high-intensity of the synchrotron radiation to detect very weak Bragg reflections. These experiments were carried out using the high-intensity (low-resolution) configuration of the X-ray diffraction beamlines at the LNLS, Brazil. By this procedure, we were able to study the crystal structure of nanostructured zirconia-ceria (ZrO2-CeO2) solid solutions for the whole compositional range, identifying the metastable forms of the tetragonal phase of these materials, which have important technological applications.