Synthesis and characterization of TiO2 nanocrystals through sol-gel and hydrothermal methods*

Nanomaterials with special and interesting properties, which can be different comparing to the macro scale materials, offer a large area of practical applications in all social-economical fields. Incorporating metallic and non-metallic dopant ions into the titanium dioxide particles can influence the performance of these photocatalysts. This affects the dynamics of electron-ion recombination and interfacial charge transfer. In this paper it was synthesized undoped and doped TiO2 nanocrystals with metallic (Ag) and non-metallic (N) ions through sol-gel and hydrothermal methods. The materials were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDAX), diffuse reflectance UV-VIS, thermogravimetric analysis (TG) and differential thermal analysis (DTA).