A real time observation of phase transition of anatase TiO < inf> 2 nanotubes into rutile nanoparticles by in-situ joule heating inside transmission electron microscope

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-1-2010

Abstract

We report the in situ Joule heating induced phase transformation of anatase TiO2 nanotubes into rutile nanoparticles inside a high-resolution transmission electron microscope (TEM) equipped with a scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) probe. Under a bias heating of 10 V, the anatase TiO2 nanotube breaks into ultrafine anatase nanoparticles of average size between 5-10 nm. On further increasing the bias voltage to 20 V, the nanoclusters of anatase particles become prone to a solid state reaction and are grown into stable rutile nanoparticles of size ranging between 20-25 nm. The formation of rutile nanoparticles was confirmed by the observation of diffraction pattern and high resolution imaging of these particles, which corresponds to the tetragonal TiO2 rutile phase (a = 4.59 Å, c = 2.95 Å, P42/mnm). © 2010 American Scientific Publishers.

Publication Title

Advanced Science Letters

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