ESR Characterization of ZrO2 Nanopowder

Article abstract of DOI:10.1021/j100001a050

ESR techniques have been used to study ZrO2 nanopowder (10-100 nm particle size) prepared by precipitation methods.They show that nano-ZrO2 has two kinds of ESR signals, which are assigned to Zr³⁺ and F-center paramagnetic centers, respectively.The Zr³⁺ signal is a bulk related signal; on the contrary, the F-center signal is surface related.Quantitative ESR experiments indicated that the F-center signal intensity increases and the Zr³⁺ signal intensity decreases with the increase of specific surface area: 50 nm is a critical particle size; when the nanoparticle size is bigger than 50 nm, its F-center signal vanishes, but its Zr³⁺ signal intensity increases dramatically.