Preparation of rutile TiO2 nanofibers by TiO2 sol intercalation of ultrafine layered titanate

To prepare TiO2 intercalated tetratitanate, TiO2 solution and ultrafine layered titanate K2Ti4O9 obtained via solid-state reaction by using nanometer-sized TiO2 as raw material were used as guest and host materials respectively. The structure and morphology of the resulting samples were characterized by XRD and TEM experiments. It was found that during the intercalation process, the interlayer distance was expanded step-by-step and the interlayer structure of titanate might be destroyed and degraded to slits by prolonging the solution intercalation time. Rutile TiO2 nanofibers with the average size of 5 × 50 nm were obtained at room temperature while the duration time was prolonged to 72 h.