Facile synthesis and growth mechanism of mesoporous anatase titanium dioxide nanoparticles via sol-gel method

An investigation on the synthesis of highly monodispersed mesoporous anatase titanium dioxide (TiO₂) nanoparticles has been reported in this work. The mesoporous nanoparticles were obtained by a facile sol-gel method where titanium isopropoxide (TTIP) was used as the titanium precursor in basic solution. Here, the effect of reaction time was studied to study the growing mechanism of TiO₂ nanocrystal. The as-synthesized nanoparticles were characterized with X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) Surface Area Analyzer, and High Resolution Tunneling Electron Microscopy (HR-TEM). Based on the result, it is found that a highly monodispersed mesoporous anatase TiO₂ nanoparticles with large surface area could successfully be synthesized. It is also believed that the morphology of as-synthesized particles could easily be controlled by the reaction time. Results show that uniform mesoporous TiO₂ nanoparticles with perfect spherical morphology could be obtained when the reaction was performed in 3 hours of reaction time.