Effect of Annealing on Microstructural Properties of Microwave Assisted Synthesized TiO2

Abstract

In this study, TiO₂ was synthesized by microwave assisted sol-gel method and effect of annealing temperature on microstructural properties was investigated. Prepared material was annealed at three different temperature; 400, 500 and 600 ?C. Samples were subjected to XRD, FE-SEM, EDS and UV-Visible spectroscopy to investigate the microstructural properties. XRD pattern shows semicrystalline nature of unannealed TiO₂ which converted into perfect crystalline nature on annealing at higher temperature. Dominant evolution of tetragonal anatase phase of TiO₂ was observed. However, in TiO₂ annealed at 600 ?C along with anatase phase, presence of rutile phase was also observed which shows phase transition at higher annealing temperature. All the samples showed strong optical absorption in UV region. FE-SEM micrograph depicts clusters of spherical particles having particle size in the range of 20-30 nm and porous nature of sample. EDS measurement also confirms the formation of TiO₂ as peaks only corresponding to titanium and oxygen were observed.