Preparation of nanocrystalline titanium dioxide fibers using sol–gel method and centrifugal spinning

This paper reports the study of the preparation and structural characterization of nanocrystalline titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ) fibers, which were prepared using sol–gel method with titanium tetrachloride (TiCl 4 ) as the titanium source and acetylacetone as chelating agent to synthesize the poly-acetylacetonatotitanium (PAT) spinning solution, followed by centrifugal spinning and steam atmosphere heat-treatment. The molecule structure of the PAT was analyzed. Using the fourier transform infrared and 1 H nuclear magnetic resonance spectrum. The microstructure of the TiO 2 fibers was observed by using scanning electron microscope, which showed that the fibers’ diameters are in the range of 5–15 μm. The effects of the SiO 2 doping were investigated by using high-resolution transmission electron microscope and X-ray diffractometer, and the conclusion is that SiO 2 doping can efficiently inhibit the grain growth of TiO 2 fibers and defer the phase transformation of anatase-to-rutile. In fact, the grain size is 33.2 nm for the un-doped TiO 2 fibers heat-treated at 700 °C, while the grain size is only 7.6 nm for the TiO 2 fibers doped with 15 wt% SiO 2 , which shows the possibility to obtain nano-crystalline anatase TiO 2 fibers at higher heat-treatment temperature.