Morphology and photoluminescence study of titania nanoparticles

Titania nanoparticles are prepared by sol-gel chemistry with a poly(ethylene oxide) methyl ether methacrylate-block-poly(dimethylsiloxane)-block-poly(ethylene oxide) methyl ether methacrylate triblock copolymer acting as the templating agent. The sol-gel components-hydrochloric acid, titanium tetraisopropoxide, and triblock copolymer-are varied to investigate their effect on the resulting titania morphology. An increased titania precursor or polymer content yields smaller primary titania structures. Microbeam grazing incidence small-angle X-ray scattering measurements, which are analyzed with a unified fit model, reveal information about the titania structure sizes. These small structures could not be observed via the used microscopy techniques. The interplay among the sol-gel components via our triblock copolymer results in different sized titania nanoparticles with higher packing densities. Smaller sized titania particles, (∼13-20 nm in diameter) in the range of exciton diffusion length, are formed by 2% by weight polymer and show good crystallinity with less surface defects and high oxygen vacancies.