Atmospheric cold plasmas for synthesizing nanocrystalline anatase TiO2 using dielectric barrier discharges

Nanocrystalline anatase TiO2 has been successfully synthesized using TiCl4 and O-2 as precursors by atmospheric cold plasmas generated by dielectric barrier discharges (DBD) without extra heating or thermal treatment. For the TiO2 powders synthesized by DBD plasma at an energy density of 5.9 kJ(.)L(-1), XRD and TEM analyses revealed that the nanocrystallite size is about 10-15 nm. Only a single crystalline structure of anatase was observed performing XRD, HRTEM and SAED measurements. It was found that the particle size decreased with increasing the discharge power, and that the chlorine contamination dramatically decreased when using high discharge power levels.