A chemical route to room-temperature synthesis of nanocrystalline TiO2 thin films

A lot of methods are developed for the deposition of TiO2 thin films; however, in each of these methods as-deposited films are amorphous and need further heat treatment at high temperature. In the present article, a chemical bath deposition (CBD) method was used for the preparation of TiO2 thin films. We investigated nanocrystalline TiO2 thin films using CBD at room temperature onto glass and ITO coated glass substrate. The films were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) techniques. The chemically synthesized films were nanocrystalline and composed of crystal grains of 2-3 nm. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.