Various chemical methods such as co-precipitation [4], conventional
sol–gel [5,6], spray pyrolysis [7] and hydrothermal [8,9] have
been reported till date for synthesizing various grades of yttria
powders. All of them involve phase pure product formation by calcinations
at high temperature up to 1100 °C for 3–5 h. Solution combustion
synthesis, with its advantages of mixing the reactants at
molecular level and nanopowders formation due to production of
various gasses during combustion, is an attractive technique for production
of simple and complex oxide powders [10–13]. Sometimes
temperature generated due to reaction of fuel with nitrate is high
enough to give phase pure and crystalline product without need of
high temperature calcinations as reported recently for yttria synthesis