Physical Investigations of Titanium Dioxide Nanorods Film Prepared by Hydrothermal Technique
R. Saleh, Odai N. Salman, Mohammed O. Dawood
Abstract
In this work, well-oriented and homogeneous titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanorods (NRs) was synthesized by hydrothermal method. In this method, vertically aligned arrays of TiO2 were built on the conductive Fluorine–Tin–Oxide (FTO) glass substrate. Nanoparticles (NRs) of TiO2 showed a tetragonal shape with a square top face, according to the image of the field emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM). The TiO2 NRs are polycrystalline, having two phases: rutile and anatase, according to X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. The optical properties of a TiO2 nanorods arrays were examined, including transmittance, absorption coefficient, and energy bandgap. An optical energy band gap of 3.18 eV was obtained. According to the photoluminescence emission measurement, the energy bandgap was 3.3 eV. For further study of the optical properties of the TiO2 Nanorods films, reflectance spectrum was used as a function of wavelength to estimate the value of the energy bandgap and its value was 3.45 eV. By comparing the values obtained from the three methods, it is found that they are closely alike, which confirms the formation of the TiO2 nanostructure.