Synthesis and characterization of black amorphous titanium oxide nanoparticles by spark discharge method

In the last decade, while crystalline titanium oxide nanoparticles have been extensively studied, the studies on amorphous polymorph nanoparticles are relatively rare and limited to the ab initio studies. We have synthesized black amorphous titanium oxide nanoparticles using, for the first time, spark ablation in the argon gas followed by oxidation at atmospheric conditions. The produced nanoparticles were characterized by various characterization methods to study their structure, size, morphology, surface area and optical properties. XRD analysis indicated the formation of an amorphous TiO2 phase together with Ti, TiO and Ti2O3 crystalline phases. FESEM demonstrated that the produced nanoparticles had a narrow size distribution. EDS analysis suggested the formation of nonstoichiometric titanium oxide. TEM and SAED analyses showed that the majority of nanoparticles were in amorphous state and possessed an average size of about 5.2 nm. A very high specific surface area of 310 m2/g was measured for the produced nanoparticles by the BJH analysis. These titanium oxide nanoparticles showed an optical band gap of around 3.2eV and an enhanced absorption in the whole visible spectrum measured by the UV-Vis and DRS analyses due to the oxygen deficiency. These results indicate that the spark ablation in the gas phase is a facile method for the synthesis of black amorphous titanium oxide nanoparticles.