Role of various alcohol washing media in obtaining a remarkable texture for La2Ce2O7 powders and ceramics.

La2Ce2O7 has not been explored much for application purposes due to several material and/or process issues; the concerns involve phase, compositional purity, modest thermal conductivity, poor sintered density etc. Through this work, we demonstrate a panacea for all such issues via a simple process modification, viz., treatments with alcohol washing and ultrasonication for the synthesis of La2Ce2O7 nanopowders. Dense ceramics (>97%) along with absolute phase and compositional purity were obtained via pressureless conventional sintering at 1400°C; the sintered ceramic also depicted a high (111) texture (Lotgering factor ~0.9). The root cause of this texture was traced to an "oriented attachment"‐type growth mechanism of the La2Ce2O7 nanocrystals that gets extended in micron scale leading to the formation of an organized and uniform rice flake‐type microstructure. The ionic conductivity data of the La2Ce2O7 ceramics showed significant improvement (in orders of magnitude) for the ethanol‐washed sample. This work has been presented as a case study to acknowledge the additional benefit (of obtaining a homogeneous microstructure via "oriented aggregation") of ethanol and ultrasonication treatment for a ceramic system leading to multiple advantages, viz., full densification at low temperature, high texture etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]