Characterization of Nanocrystalline Flower-Like TiO₂ Film Synthesized in Atmospheric Non-thermal Plasma System

Abstract

Highly crystallized TiO 2 flower-like films with observable strong white photoluminescence are successfully deposited on the quartz glass substrates in one-step within an atmospheric non-thermal Ar/O 2 /TiCl 4 plasma system. It has shown that the properties and the structure of the synthesized films are influenced by plasma parameters such as discharge power and precursor supply rate etc. The deposited films with various plasma powers are evaluated by field-emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM), transmission electron microscope (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and photoluminescent spectrum (PL). It is clear that the flower-like crystalline in which the flower blades are connected among each other can be greatly constructed on the TiO 2 film in the earlier stage. The evaluation of XRD and HRTEM show that the film is pure anatase phase when the discharge power is 100 W and it transformed into the mixed phase of anatase and rutile when the discharge power is 120 W and in an extended time of 2 hours. The anatase TiO 2 flower-like film shows a strong white photoluminescence which could have potentially great applications in photocatalyst, in-situ cytokine effects, biocompatible fluorescence probes or biological imaging.