Direct Hydrothermal Processing of Long Titanate Nanofibers from Natural Rutile

Via the direct hydrothermal processing using natural rutile as a starting material, long titanate nanofibers (typically 10-500 μm in length and 20-50 nm in diameter) have been successfully synthesized in high yield Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), electron diffraction, and UV-Vis spectroscopy demonstrated that the as-synthesized nanofibers presumably consisted of sodium hydrogen trititanate ((Na,H)2Ti3O7, e.g., Na0.4H1.6Ti3O7) including some hexatitanate-type defects ((Na,H)2Ti6O13). The direct hydrothermal treatment for natural rutile will be a promising low-cost processing for 1-D nanomaterials, which can act not only as the reaction step but also as the purification.