Executive Summary : | Due to its excellent physicochemical qualities, nano TiO2 is a perfect material and has been extensively explored as a candidate in these applications. This property can be improved by encapsulating titania in silica. Nano ceria and nano alumina in the place of nano titania are recently recommended promising candidates for their cheap and easy availability. However, it is critical to synthesise these oxides in nano sizes with high IR reflectivity (Sheemol et al., 2021). Nano metal oxides said above with particle size less than 100 nm are to be synthesised by sol-gel or hydrothermal methods. More critically, the transparency near to 90% also need to be achieved by controlling the film thickness. This work aims to synthesise robust, IR reflective, optically transparent top coats based on ceria and alumina. The IR reflective qualities of CeO2-Al2O3 coatings can be achieved by layer-by-layer deposition/ dipping technique. The photo-physical properties like IR reflectivity with respect to thickness and the number of layers, reduction in surface heat build-up and its effect on the improvement in the efficiency of solar cells, the reduction in the indoor temperature of automobile (EVs) etc will be carefully studied in this TARE Project. The present work envisages to adopt the sol-gel and hydrothermal route for the synthesis of nano size 20% CeO2 and 80% Al2O3 mixed oxide nano colloids capped with silica. The first step in the synthesis process is to prepare the precursor materials for the nanoparticles of ceria and alumina. The precursor materials will then be subjected to hydrothermal synthesis to form the nanoparticles of ceria, or alumina and their mixed forms. The nanoparticles are then encapsulated in a silica shell using a sol-gel process. This typically involves adding a silica precursor such as tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) to the nanoparticle solution, followed by a hydrolysis and condensation reaction to form the silica shell around the nanoparticles. The resulting silica-encapsulated nanoparticles are then characterized using techniques such as transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) to confirm their size, morphology, and chemical composition. Careful control of the synthesis conditions and parameters will be ascertained to ensure the production of high-quality, stable materials that are suitable for use as top coats for solar panels and as windshields for EVs. |