文献类型：期刊文献

英文题名：Precisely controlled heterogeneous nucleation sites for TiO2 crystal growth

作者：Yang, Shuang[1];Hou, Yu[1];Zhang, Bo[1];Yang, Xiao Hua[1];Zhang, Haimin[2];Zhao, Hui Jun[2];Yang, Hua Gui[1,2]

机构：[1]E China Univ Sci & Technol, Sch Mat Sci & Engn, Key Lab Ultrafine Mat, Minist Educ, Shanghai 200237, Peoples R China;[2]Griffith Univ, Ctr Clean Environm & Energy, Griffith, Qld 4222, Australia

年份：2014

卷号：16

期号：32

起止页码：7502

外文期刊名：CRYSTENGCOMM

收录：;WOS:【SCI-EXPANDED(收录号:WOS:000341569200019)】；

基金：This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21373083, 21203061), SRF for ROCS, SEM, SRFDP, Programme for Professor of Special Appointment (Eastern Scholar) at Shanghai Institutions of Higher Learning, Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (WD1313009, WD1214036, WM1314018), and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2012M511056, 2013T60425).

语种：英文

摘要：The development of new methods which enable exquisite control over crystal size over a wide range is highly desired for optimizing their performance. In this work, we employed anatase TiO2 as an example to demonstrate a heterogeneous nucleation approach by coupling the slow hydrolysis of a titanium precursor and a dispersible silica substrate. After tight control of the number of nucleation sites, the crystal size is greatly dependent on the number of seeds. An in-depth nucleation analysis was carried out that showed that the reaction product, hydrofluoric acid (HF), plays a key role in selective etching of the substrate and further leads to crystal-substrate separation. Additionally, our preliminary results illustrated that the growth of Fe2O3 crystals can also be tuned by such a method without shape and composition variation. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of fine-tuning the crystal size of anatase TiO2 by a heterogeneous nucleation method, and this provides a promising way to design and synthesize new materials with appropriate size and shape.