Effect of the steam activation thermal treatment on the microstructure of continuous TiO 2 fibers

Abstract

The continuous TiO2 fibers have been synthesized by the sol-gel method using the polymer of titanate as the precursor solution. The as-synthesized samples were characterized using XRD, SEM, and HR-TEM analysis methods. The grain growth kinetics was primarily investigated. The results demonstrated that the average diameters of the fibers were in the range of 20-30μm, the crystal phase of the synthesized TiO 2 fiber was transformed from anasate to rutile, and the crystal size became bigger with increasing the temperature using steam activation. The growth exponent and the constant of growth rate of the rutile crystal phase at 500 C were 4 and 2.55 × 10 6 nm/h, respectively. The activation energies of crystalline growth during 500°C ∼ 700°C and 700°C ∼ 800°C were 38.62kJ/mol and 143.91kJ/mol, respectively. Copyright © 2012 Xiangchao Zhang et al.