A comparison between optical properties of TiO2 nanowires obtained by EMA method and experiment

Optical properties of TiO2 nanowires, synthesized by two-step thermal evaporation process, have been studied experimentally and theoretically. Based on the theoretical method optical constants of nanowires have been calculated with the use of the effective medium approximation (EMA). As evidenced by X-ray diffraction patterns our synthesized nanowires, whose diameters and lengths were within the ranges of 50–90 nm and 500–1500 nm, respectively, were found to be crystalline rutile TiO2 with the major refraction being along the (1 1 0) direction. The experimental data of the reflectance of TiO2 nanowires has been obtained using spectrometer in wavelength 250–800 nm, and then, compared with the spectrum of reflectance predicted by the EMA theoretical model. Our measured experimental optical data has been found to be in good accord with our predicted results spectrum with the use of the EMA modeling; this agreement indicates that our estimation of the volume fraction from atomic force microscopy (AFM) data was accurate.