Abstract
Titanium dioxide (TiO2) is a versatile and inexpensive material for extended applicability in several scientific and technological fields including photo-catalysis for industrial waste treatment, energy harvesting, and hydrogen production. In this work, we report the synthesis of TiO2 thin film using hydrothermal method and investigations on the influence of reaction time and annealing temperature on growth mechanism of the TiO2 nanorods. The synthesized TiO2 films were studied by using UV–visible spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS). The XRD and Raman measurements revealed the formation of defect free and pure tetragonal TiO2 rutile phase. The TiO2 thin films show absorption band edge at around 420 nm in the UV–visible spectrum and exhibit direct band gap value of 2.9 eV. The TiO2 nanorods are demonstrated to grow randomly on the FTO substrate with changing reaction times but grow uniformly in a flower-like pattern with increasing annealing temperature. Investigation of the field emission properties of TiO2 thin films (tested as field-emitter array) estimates the turn-on and threshold field at 4.06 and 7.06 V/µm at 10 and 100 µA/cm2, respectively.Graphic
Highlights
Nanocrystalline semiconductor materials have been attracting significant attention recently because of their unique physical and chemical properties that makes them attractive for application in industrial waste treatment and solar energy conversion
The X-ray diffraction (XRD) pattern of the set-I and set-II of TiO2 thin films as described under the synthesis section are depicted in Fig. 2a, b, respectively
We have focused on the annealing temperature after synthesis of TiO2 nanorods in the hydrothermal method
Summary
Nanocrystalline semiconductor materials have been attracting significant attention recently because of their unique physical and chemical properties that makes them attractive for application in industrial waste treatment (photocatalysis) and solar energy conversion (photovoltaics). Titanium dioxide (TiO2) a wide bandgap material (3.4 eV) has emerged as the most studied of these photocatalysts owing to its high degradation efficiency with almost any organic molecule and many other attractive properties, including physical and chemical stability, low cost, good thin film transparency [1,2,3,4,5] These germane properties make TiO2 attractive materials for several applications including solar cell (DSSCs, QDSSCs, ETA Solar Cell) [6,7,8,9,10], photocatalysis [11], heterogeneous catalysis, environmental hazards removal [12], ceramics and paint industries [13,14,15], gas sensors [16, 17], and supercapacitors [18,19,20]. A variety of methods have been developed for the synthesis
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