Abstract
Titanium dioxide (TiO2) stands out for use in various applications mainly due to its properties of thermal and chemical stability and its excellent optical properties. However, these properties are dependent on the type and phase morphology, which is related to the TiO2 processing method. Thus, this paper proposed to synthesize TiO2 nanoparticles by polymeric precursor method with different polymorphs, and evaluate the influence of these phases in the photoluminescent properties. For this, the stoichiometric molar proportions of citric acid:metallic cations of 1:1, 2:1, 3:1, 4:1 and 5:1 were investigated. The nanoparticles were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), infrared spectroscopy, textural analysis, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), excitation and emission spectroscopy and determination of the band gap by UV-Vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy. The presence of anatase and rutile was confirmed by XRD in different proportions for each sample. The agglomerate size increased with the citric acid/metal cations ratio as observed by SEM. Concerning photoluminescence, the maximum intensity in the emission spectrum occurred at the wavelength of 533 nm for the 3:1 sample and the maximum intensity in the excitation spectrum occurred for the 2:1 sample at the wavelength of 451 nm.
Keywords:
titanium dioxide; Pechini method; optical properties
