Low Temperature Synthesis of Several Titanium Dioxide Solid Solutions through the Sol-Gel Method

Abstract

Titanium dioxide powders constituted by anatase single phase are very useful to understand several properties of that semiconductor applied as photocatalyst material. In addition, the reconstructive transformation involved in the anatase-to-rutile phase transition is also dependent of compositional and structural characteristics, which is consequence of the xerogel precursors. In this work, it was provided some structural investigation and the thermal event associated to different compositions of titanium dioxide xerogel samples obtained by Sol-Gel method. It was prepared two different doped-sample sets, one with bared titanium dioxide matrix and other with 10 mol% of zirconium-silicon one, and both sample sets were submitted to doping with 2 mol% of cation pairs, taking in account the ionic radii and oxidation states. The small and pentavalent vanadium cation was combined with trivalent and bigger lanthanum and bismuth ones, in order to provide non strained unit cell making an average values for ionic radii and oxidation states, taking in account the tetravalent titanium cation. By thermal analysis, X-ray diffractometry, FTIR and Raman spectroscopies it was possible to demonstrate the insertion of bigger dopants as lanthanum and bismuth, as well as the smaller one as vanadium, which are usually dopants not supported in isolated forms were successfully incorporated to anatase phase when combined as expected in previous composition design stage.