In many fields of science and technology, such as catalysis, separation processes, elements of batteries and capacitors, solar cells, fuel cells etc., our goal is to produce materials with large specific surface area, porosity and appropriate structure of easily accessible pores. Material that can be synthesized in complex 3-D branching morphologies is the most stable polymorphic modification of TiO2 – rutile. During the experimental part of the master’s thesis, we designed and characterized a semi-batch system that included a hydrothermal reactor with the possibility of adding a substrate to the system during the hydrothermal synthesis. With the system in place, we wanted to understand in detail the mechanism of growth of TiO2 crystals under the hydrothermal condition. During the experiments, we found out that the hydrothermal synthesis of rutile crystals is significantly influenced by the reactor-heating rate. The reactor was heated up to 200 °C in range between 15 min and 6 hours. When the heating rate was slower, more crystals of rutile-type TiO2 were formed and less anatase form was produced. The heating rate did not affect the size of the rutile crystals, but did affect the shape of the crystals. The slower the heating rate was, the more 1st generation of twins we got, and less of rod like rutile form was made. Until now, this was unknown. We also wanted to create multigenerational twins of rutile crystals that would contribute to an even larger specific surface of the crystals. We found out that their formation is influenced by many parameters that are variable and can cause formation of twins only in certain combinations. These parameters are reaction time and temperature, concentration and pH of a possible substrate, when and at what temperature a possible substrate is added to the system, impurities present in the substrate or basic solution etc. In the continuation of the research, these parameters and the relationships between them should be identified, and that would give us the opportunity to generate multiple twins. Precipitates were analysed by XRD and SEM.
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