Formation of TiO₂ nano-rods by hydrothermal synthesis method

The density of state of material is depending on the size of materials. The electronic properties of the material can be tailored by proper selection of synthesis process. Further, microstructure of anode materials for solar cell like ZnO, Al₂O₃, TiO₂ etc., plays crucial role in the effective absorption of sun light. In the present work, TiO₂ based powder with anatase phase has been synthesized by hydrothermal method with NaOH in a vacuum oven at 150 °C and annealed at 500 °C for 4 hours. The X-ray diffraction data reveals that synthesized TiO₂ powder exhibit tetragonal crystalline structure with space group I41/amd (#141). The transmission electron microscopy shows the formation of TiO₂ nano rods with almost uniform thickness in range 7-10 nm. This fact is also confirmed with similar formation of rods in scanning electron microscopy. The better absorption is observed in the sample as revealed by UV-Visible spectroscopy and the band gap is obtained from Tauc’s relation is ∼3.25 eV.