Anisotropic growth of gas–liquid precipitated ceria mesocrystals to wires several micrometers in length

Ceria (CeO(2)) wires with lengths of 6 μm and diameters of tens of nanometers are fabricated through the anisotropic growth of mesocrystals. In the gas–liquid precipitation process, an aqueous Ce(NO(3))(3) solution is used as a starting material and NH(3) gas is used to induce CeO(2) precipitation at the gas–liquid interface. CeO(2) mesocrystals, formed by this process at 60 °C, grow in the direction of 〈011〉 into micrometer length wires exposing {001} and {011} on their side walls. It is shown that the initial pH of the starting material solution is a key parameter to attain anisotropic growth of the CeO(2) mesocrystals. We thus propose the formation mechanism of micrometer length-CeO(2) wires from mesocrystals.