Doping Titanium Dioxide by Fluoride Ion

Abstract

Titanium dioxide has a special feature: anatase, to rutile transformation which was considered in our investigations. It is especially important to keep anatase form of titanium dioxide for photocatalytic materials, different ceramics with tribo-chemical properties, self-cleaning coatings and self-sterilizing coatings. For that only one of the titanium dioxide forms is more suitable – anatase, which is more active but not stable, because it transforms to rutile during the time or with the temperature increase loses its activity. Different methods of stabilising anatase have been considered in the paper. Several doping agents have been determined and it was chosen fluorine ion to modify titanium dioxide. Stabilization of anatase is achieved by preparing the reaction mixture by a sol-gel method with hydrofluoric acid. It has shown thermodynamic data, results of experiment, temperatures of anatase to rutile transformation of non-doped and doped titanium dioxide, its X-Ray diffraction and TGA. It is proved that titanium dioxide doped by fluorine ion keeps anatase form till the temperature is more than 1000 °C.