Pristine and cerium-doped zinc oxides with a different dopant concentration between 1 and 5% were fabricated using the hydrothermal method. Prepared materials show direct bandgaps of comparable values. Cerium-doped materials show UV-Vis spectra with broad tails toward the visible light range. Pure zinc oxide displays the flower-like form, while cerium-doped materials possess rod-shaped morphologies. The materials were tested for the degradation performance of methylene blue under visible light irradiation. To elucidate the difference in their performance, further measurements and experiments were conducted. Overall, 3%-cerium doped zinc oxide shows the greatest photocatalytic performance. This is possibly attributed to its rod shape with good uniformity and to the enrichment of oxygen vacancies in its surface layers. Finally, trapping experiments reveal that positive holes and hydroxyl radicals were the predominant active species during the photocatalytic degradation process.

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The nano-mixed oxides CeO2-TiO2 was synthesized by gel combustion method using polyvinyl alcohol as fuel and mixtures of titanium trichloride and cerium(IV) nitrate at a relatively low calcination temperature of 550°C for 2 h. The prepared CeO2-TiO2 nanoparticles with a specific area of 65.70 m2 g−1 were dispersed in polyurethane matrix in different concentration conditions from 0.0 to 1.5 wt% to study ultraviolet durability following HONDA HES D 6501-97 standards. After 400 h of testing in the QUV accelerate weathering tester, the thin film containing 1 wt% CeO2-TiO2 nano-mixed oxides has presented the noticeable capacity for absorbing ultraviolet light by only 6.8 g.u change in specular gloss at 60° and ΔE = 3.66 in color difference.

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