Achievements and challenges of nanostructured Titania Eco-materials derived from Sol-Gel Processing

TL;DR

This paper reviews the process of creating nanostructured titania eco-materials via sol-gel methods, analyzing process parameters and their effects on phase transformation and crystallite size.

Contribution

It provides a detailed characterization of sol-gel processing steps and the influence of peptization conditions on titania nanostructure and phase transformation.

Findings

Peptizing at 80°C for 12 hours yields small, uniform anatase crystallites of 4.6 nm.

Dynamic light scattering characterizes early-stage sol parameters.

Calcination induces phase transformation from anatase to rutile.

Abstract

Nanostructured titania derived from the sol-gel processing requires a detailed study to clarify state-of-art of every process step starting from colloidal sol, peptization, gelation to the final sintering. The applied parameters such as peptization temperature and time in the current investigation of sol during the early stage of processing were characterized by dynamic light scattering (DLS) and compared to other parameters found in the literature. Upon gelation, the resulting anatase was calcined to study the phase transformation to rutile as well as to discriminate the effect of peptized and unpeptized in which the characterizations were carried out by using XRD, Nitrogen adsorption-desorption isotherm and HRTEM. It shows that peptizing the titania sol at 80oC for at least 12 h resulted in a small and uniform anatase crystallite with size of 4.6 nm.