A facile strategy to fabricate Ce³⁺ion – doped La₂O₃-SnO₂hybrid nanocomposites for energy storage applications

Metal oxides are known for their multifunctional properties and show potential to be used for energy storage applications. In this paper, sol-gel method was used to prepare Ce³⁺ion – doped Ce_xLa_2-xO₃/SnO₂hybrid nanocomposites with concentration x = 0.0 to 1.0. Single phase metal oxide (La₂O₃) was hybridized with SnO₂to increase power density of the material. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) techniques were used to investigate the structural and morphological properties of prepared samples. Lanthanum was replaced by highly resistive cerium which increased the resistance and net polarization of the material. The main purpose to prepare these nanocomposites is to investigate the polarization mechanism in the applied frequency range from 1 MHz to 3 GHz using impedance analyzer. Both low and high frequency regions provided a significant impact of dielectric constant as the high value 6.53 was determined at frequency of 1 MHz when x = 0.0. Furthermore, with a doping concentration of x = 0.8, the maximum dielectric constant was measured at high frequency around 2.32 GHz due to local polarization. Interestingly, Cole-Cole graphs with double semicircles display the impact of the sample's grain and grain boundaries. In addition, the discovered dielectric characteristics indicated that the synthesized nanocomposites might be used for high frequency devices and energy storage applications.