Synthesis and characterization of nano-TiO2 via different methods

In this paper, we report the comparison between TiO2 nanoparticles prepared via two different routes; i) via sol-gel route and ii) by hydrothermal method. It was found that when prepared under the same ambient conditions viz temperature, pressure etc. and keeping all the parameters same viz precursors, mole ratio, solvent etc; the nanoparticles prepared via sol-gel route were highly crystalline and had smaller crystallite size (~ 7 nm) as compared to the one prepared by hydrothermal method (~ 17 nm). The crystallinity and the crystallite size were examined by XRD and TEM. The band gap values of the TiO2 nanoparticles were calculated to be 3.54 and 3.43 eV. Photoluminescence (PL) was also recorded for the two types of particles and results have been analyzed.