A comparative study of morphology and composition on oxide nanopowders elaborated by SPVD

The paper proposes a method of obtaining oxide nanopowders in a solar reactor using the solar energy (solar physical vapor deposition). The proposed method is a new method of obtaining nanopowders. Taking into consideration that the properties of the materials change once they get to nanodimensions it is desirable to obtain nanomaterials starting from base materials. Because of the properties that nanomaterials provide, the demand has grown in the last period of time. Also the last few years provided a various number of nanomaterials used in different fields of research. Among the materials that were obtained by SPVD there can be reminded the MoS₂, the MoS₂ doped with Zn, CeO₂ doped with Zr. The CeO₂ is used in applications such as catalysis, gas sensor, fuell cell as well as optical additives. All of the obtained nanopowders were analyzed and characterized by X-Ray diffraction (XRD) and by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) in order to acquire the information about the crystallography and morphology considering the reactions parameters that were used in obtaining the nanopowders. From the X-Ray diffraction can be concluded in the case of the CeO₂ that doping occurred. By controlling the reactions parameters the end result is different in therms of obtained morphology of the nanopowders. All of the above elaborated nanopowders can be deposited in the form of thin films by laser ablation method in order to obtain better properties of the base material.