Morphology-selective synthesis method of gear-like CeO2 microstructures and their optical properties

•Gear-like CeO2 microstructures are synthesized by a CTAB-assisted hydrothermal method.•The CeO2 microstructures show excellent room temperature optical properties.•The controllable morphology and excellent optical properties should make the gear-like CeO2 microstructures excellent candidates for applications in related areas.

Gear-like CeO2 microstructures have been successfully synthesized by a CTAB (cetyltrimethyl ammonium bromide)-assisted hydrothermal method using Ce(NO3)3·6H2O as the cerium source and ammonium hydrogen carbonate as the precipitator. X-ray diffraction (XRD) inferred that the synthesized CeO2 microstructures exhibited a fluorite cubic structure. A scanning electron microscope (SEM) revealed that the CeO2 microstructures have a gear-like microstructure. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and the Raman spectroscopy reflected the existence of the oxygen vacancies and Ce3+ ions in the bowknot-like CeO2 microstructures. The synthesized CeO2 shows excellent room temperature optical properties, which is likely associated with Ce3+ ions and oxygen vacancies in the gear-like CeO2 samples.