Use of ion-assisted techniques for determining the structure of TiO2 nanotubes

In recent years, several researchers have reported obtaining titanium dioxide nanotubes presenting a variety of advanced and functional properties for high-performance applications, e.g., for solar and fuel cells, gas sensor, self-cleaning and biomedical devices. Electrochemical oxidation of titanium has been widely used as a method for fabrication of self-organized titanium oxide nanotubes (TiO2 NTs), since it is a simple and inexpensive process, which allows a great control over the size and configuration of the formed structure. Normally, the morphological and structural characterizations are based on images from scanning or transmission electron microscopy. The use of characterization techniques assisted by energetic ion beams, such as RBS or MEIS, can simultaneously evaluate the composition and structural properties of the nanotubes. In this work, titanium oxide nanotubes were obtained by electrochemical oxidation of commercially pure titanium via constant-voltage experiments varying the growth time and the potential applied in order to access the formation dynamics of the NTs, including inner and outer diameters as function of the length, and the formation of the end lace type porous layer. The characterizations made by RBS were compared by analysis of top and cross-sectional FEG-SEM images demonstrating a good compromise between them.