In solar energy transferring and photocatalysis of poison compounds in environment research and applications, titanium oxide is remarkable material to study. In addition to photocatalytic effect, strong oxidizing power, chemical inertness, photo generated holes, and being non-toxic material are also properties of the titanium oxide which make it exceptional material. In nature, titanium dioxide available in three forms, which are rutile, anatase and brookite. After the advent of nanotechnology, the interest in nanostructured anatase form of titanium dioxide is increased, so the some of the properties have been discovered in last decade.
Figure: Anatase Titanium Dioxide Unit Cell
http://www.marysrosaries.com/collaboration/index.php?title=File:Anatase_mineral-unit-cell-3D_TiO2_.png#filelinks
Although the anatase form as you can see in the figure above is hard to synthesize, applications on paints, pigments, and photo catalyst make it worthy of scholors’ attention. Having band gap of 3.2 eV, enhance it usage to optical and semiconductor applications, so it is suitable for photovoltaic and photocatalytic reactions and luminescence study, and it is found that at high temperatures, it has normal semiconductor behavior, and at low temperatures, it has phonon scattering phenomena. One can also find applications related to chemical properties of the anatase titanium dioxide nanoparticles.
A research group in India studied impact of anatase titanium dioxide nanoparticles on mutagenic and genotoxic response in chinese hamster lung fibroblast cells (V-79). They concluded that mutagenic response of titanium dioxide nanoparticles can be used as short term indicator of potential carcinogenicity. Another research group studied green synthesis of high temperature stable anatase titanium dioxide nanoparticles using gum kondagogu, and they applied produced TiO2 to photocatalytic degradation of organic dye. They adopted methylene blue dye to green-synthesized anatase titanium dioxide nanoparticles. Therefore, they concluded that the anatase which is synthesized through a green route by the use of natural, renewable, and eco-friendly performance magnificent photocatalytic activity towards organic dye degradation.
Discovery of new properties of anatase titanium dioxide nanoparticles in the future is inevitable. With development of new synthesis methods, many applications will be found and the usage will be enhanced.
Comments
Post a Comment