A Facile Synthesis of Nanocrystalline Spherical TiO2 Particles and its Photoluminescent Properties

Spherical Titanium dioxide (TiO2) particles were successfully synthesized by sol-gel process in oil-in-water emulsion. Hydrothermal treatment was adopted to induce crystallization of the amorphous gel microspheres. The resulting particles show spherical structure and are suspended without coagulation. Doping and hydrothermal treatment had no obvious effect on the morphology of the TiO2 microspheres. The grain size obtained by XRD analysis is about 6 nm. However, doping changed the PL properties of microspheres that the green emission was suppressed by Zn2+ doping.