A facile strategy to achieve monodispersity and stability of pigment TiO2 particles in low viscosity systems

Abstract

Stable dispersion of TiO2 particle is very desirable for its practical applications in various fields. It is a big challenge to stabilize pigment TiO2 with relatively large size (200–300 nm) in low viscosity (~10 cP) systems. In the current work, we introduced a general strategy using a hydrophobic-hydrophilic structure to achieve single-dispersed TiO2 particles with long storage stability in low viscosity systems. The modified TiO2 particles (~250 nm) can be re-dispersed into water/glycol ethers mixture to form single dispersed suspension without any additives. Our study shows that the dispersion can be stable at least 60 days at room temperature and the rheological property is similar to the Newtonian fluids showing an extremely low yield stress at relatively high solid concentration. This work is expected to introduce a new strategy to improve the dispersion stability of the large size nanoparticles in low viscosity systems.