Ethylene glycol-assisted coating of titania on nanoparticles

Coating titania shells onto sub-micron sized particles has been widely studied recently, with success mainly limited to objects with sizes above 50 nm. Direct coating on particles below this size has been difficult to attain especially with good control over properties such as thickness and crystallinity. Here we demonstrate that titanium-glycolate formed by reacting titanium alkoxide and ethylene glycol is an excellent precursor for coating titania on aqueous nanoparticles. The new coating method is particularly useful for its ability to coat materials lacking strong polymers or ligands which are frequently needed to facilitate typical titania coatings. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the process of coating titania on metal nanoparticles ranging from citrate-stabilized gold and silver spheres to gold nanorods and silver nanoplates, and larger particles such as SiO2 microspheres and polymer spheres. Further the thickness of these coatings can be tuned from a few nanometers to ∼40 nm through sequential coatings. These coatings can subsequently be crystallized into TiO2 through refluxing in water or by calcination to obtain crystalline shells. This procedure can be very useful for the production of TiO2 coatings with tunable thickness and crystallinity as well as for further study on the effect of TiO2 coatings on nanoparticles.