An approach towards TiO chrysanthemum flowers with tunable properties: influence of reaction time in hydrothermal process

Rutile TiO chrysanthemum flowers were successfully synthesized by simple single step hydrothermal method. A possible formation mechanism based on hydrothermal synthesis was proposed on the basis of time dependent evolution of TiO chrysanthemum flowers. A series of TiO thin films with different morphologies and photoelectrochemical performance were prepared by varying the reaction time. Reaction time plays an important role in controlling the shape and size of nanorods as building blocks i.e. from orderly arranged TiO nanorods to well and completely grown TiO chrysanthemum flowers. The synthesized TiO chrysanthemum flowers were found to be nanocrystalline and there is formation of single pure phase TiO as confirmed by X-ray diffraction. The hierarchical TiO chrysanthemum structure endowed the high specific surface area and excellent light scattering property. Thus, this hierarchical architecture based photoanodes produce higher photoconversion efficiency i.e. 1.95 %. The enhanced photoelectrochemical performance can be attributed to improved charge separation by superior charge transportation through crystalline 3D TiO chrysanthemum flowers.