Growth of Titanium Dioxide Nanorods in 3D-Confined Spaces

Abstract

Three-dimensional (3D) nanowire (NW) networks are promising architectures for effectively translating the extraordinary properties of one-dimensional objects into a 3D space. However, to uniformly grow NWs in a 3D confined space is a serious challenge due to the coupling between crystal growth and precursor concentration that is often dictated by the mass flow characteristic of vapor or liquid phase reactants within the high-aspect ratio submicrometer channels in current strategies. We report a pulsed chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process that successfully addressed this issue and grew TiO(2) nanorods uniformly covering the entire inner surface of highly confined nanochannels. We propose a mechanism for the anisotropic growth of anatase TiO(2) based on the surface-reaction-limited CVD process. This strategy would lead to the realization of NW-based 3D nanoarchitectures from various functional materials for the applications of sensors, solar cells, catalysts, energy storage systems, and so forth.

Radially organized pillars in TiO2 and in TiO2/C microspheres: Synthesis, characterization and photocatalytic tests

“…Several approaches to control the size, shape and agglomeration state of TiO 2 nanoparticles have been attempted [4]. Nanotubes [30], nanorods [31,32], monolithic porous structures [15,33,34], inverse opals [35] and microspheres [19,[36][37][38][39][40][41] have been studied.…”

Morphology Control of Single Crystalline Rutile TiO2Nanowires

“…Titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ) nano-structures such as nanotubes, 1 nanowires, 2 nanowhiskers, 3 nanorods, 4 nanobelts, 5 and nanofibers 6 have been recently studied by many researchers because of its wide range of applications in gas sensors, 7 photocatalysis, 8,9 dye-sensitization for solar cells, 10,11 and solar water splitting for hydrogen production.…”

Strategies for designing metal oxide nanostructures

“…Compared to 1D ZnO and SnO2 nanostructures, the growth of high-quality 1D TiO2 nanostructures via the vapour deposition method is much more difficult, due to the existence of multiple polymorphs and the thermodynamically unfavourable crystallography for anisotropic crystal growth, particularly with large aspect ratio [99]. Even though TiO2 nanowires with morphology as perfect as those of ZnO and SnO2 are difficult to achieve, we still can find some attempts to achieve the vapour growth of TiO2 nanostructures [99][100][101][102].…”

“…Even though TiO2 nanowires with morphology as perfect as those of ZnO and SnO2 are difficult to achieve, we still can find some attempts to achieve the vapour growth of TiO2 nanostructures [99][100][101][102]. Shi et al [100] reported the growth of rutile TiO2 nanowires by the pulsed CVD technique from Au seeded substrates at 650°C using TiCl4 and H2O as the precursors.…”