South African Journal of Chemical Engineering (Jul 2025)
Effect of Isopropyl Peptization on Surface Particle Growth of Sol-Gel Derived Anatase: X-ray Crystallographic Analysis and Revealed on Transmission Electron Microscopy
Abstract
Titanium isopropoxide (TTIP) mediated, a unique, simple, unparalleled technique was utilized to produce a highly crystalline anatase. The crystallographic parameters were investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) technique. XRD pattern confirmed the presence of tetragonal symmetrical crystal structure with lattice parameters a=b= 3.7875 Å, c= 9.4949 Å; α=β=γ= 90°. The strongest diffraction recorded at 2θ= 25.280 predominant (101) plane. Lattice strain was calculated 0.83 % with lattice volume 136.206 Å3 and average density of dislocations 7.339 × 10-3 nm-2. The calculated atomic packing factor was 60.75 % for dense crystal, micro-strain 0.00109 and surface area to volume ratio was 0.126 nm-1 and Young’s modulus 533.028 GPa respectively. The synthesized anatase demonstrated a degree of crystallinity of 65.89 % among ICDD standard reference 64.51 %. The SEM explored the microstructure which was uniformly dispersed across the surface with no agglomeration and particles are evenly dispersed with a small sizes spherical. SEM-EDS revealed that Ti= 61.64 % and O= 38.36 % which conformation unified nanoparticles (NPs). TEM topography revealed consistent crystal development, with a crystallite size of 10.62 nm and an average particle size of 13.48 nm. The TEM-SAED pattern verified that the predominant (101), (004), (200), (105), (211), (204), (116) and (220) crystal planes were dominated with high crystallinity. HR-TEM showed the d-spacing 0.352 nm (101) while SAED revealed in 0.357 nm (101). Additionally, TEM couple EDS showed that the crystalline NPs were entirely 100 % pure. These results contribute to a better understanding of topography and structural characteristics of anatase NPs and this contributed prospectus.
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