Evaluation of the optical gap of TiO2 Obtained by Pechini method: influence of the variation of the anatase-rutile phases

In this work, TiO2 was synthesized by the Pechini method in different proportions of citric acid/metal cations to evaluate the influence of the anatase and rutile phases on the structure, morphology and optical energy gap. Thus, the samples were characterized by XRD, FTIR, distribution and size of clusters, density by helium picnometry, TGA and determination of gap band from the diffuse reflectance. The results show the formation of the anatase and rutile phases in all proportions of citric acid/metal cations evaluated. Morphologically the samples had agglomerate size between 15,89 and 19,34 mu m with density around 3.7 g/cm(3). Regarding the optical properties evaluated, it was observed that the increase in the ratio of the rutile phase to the anatase phase did not significantly alter its band gap, obtaining values between 2,97 and 3,00 eV.