Cathodic Electrochemical Synthesis of Cerium Doped Iron Oxide and Investigation of its Charge Storage and Magnetic Properties

In this paper, cerium doped iron oxide (Ce-IO) is cathodically electro-synthesized from electrolyte containing iron(III) nitrate, iron(II) chloride and cerium chloride by applying direct current of 10 mA cm–2 for 30 min. The analysis data obtained from X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission electron microscopy (FE-SEM) and energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) showed that the synthesized Ce-IO sample has composition of cerium cations doped magnetite crystal structure and average particle size of 20 nm. This developed electrochemical procedure can be proposed as a one-pot electrosynthesis platform for fabrication of nanoparticles of cerium doped iron oxide. Furthermore, the prepared Ce-IO was used as supercapacitor electrode material and its charge storage ability was specified through cyclic voltammetry (CV) and galvanostat charge-discharge (GCD) tests. The obtained charge storage data indicated that Ce-IO sample provide SCs as high as 168 and 125 F g−1 at the discharge loads of 1 and 3 A g−1, respectively, and capacity retentions of 90.4% and 81.5% after 1000 GCD cycling. These results proved the suitability of the electrosynthesized sample for use in supercapacitors. Also, the VSM data confirmed better superparamagnetic properties of Ce-IO sample (Mr=0.14 emu g–1 and HCi=2.44 G) as compared with undoped iron oxide sample (Mr=0.95 emu g–1 and HCi=14.6 G) resulting from their lower Mr and Hci values.