Effect of coarsening of sonochemical synthesized anatase on BET surface characteristics

In the present paper TiO2 (anatase) nanoparticles were synthesized by ultrasonic means proving the potential of this method. The synthesized anatase is heat treated at a temperature of 500 °C in open air atmosphere to coarse it. The heat treatment times went from 1 to 72 h, the temperature/time conditions were selected to prevent phase transformation and to solely coarsen anatase from 6.2 to 28.3 nm. The synthesized and heat treated anatase were characterized using Electron Microscopy (Transmission and Scanning), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) method, UV–vis, Raman and Infrared spectroscopy. In the present paper are proposed two algorithms that are capable of determining the BET surface characteristics or the grain size based on the XRD or BET results, respectively.