Optical and structural properties of TiO2 thin films prepared by sol–gel spin coating

Hydrogen is a renewable and non-polluting fuel. Its production from water using renewable energy is an attractive challenge. In this work we report some results on the preparation of titanium oxide TiO2 thin films for environmental applications such as water photosplitting. TiO2 thin films have been prepared by spin coating technique of sol precursor onto glass substrates. The deposited films were annealed at different temperatures in air. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) experiments show that the two well-known anatase and rutile phases were observed depending both on the conditions of deposition and on the temperature of annealing. The best conditions of crystallization were found to be around 400 °C in air. The influence of the number of deposited layer on the crystalline quality of the films was investigated. The surface morphology of the deposited film was characterized by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and scanning electronic microscopy (SEM). The UV–Vis–NIR spectroscopy shows that the film exhibits a high transmission around 90%. The best layers were obtained when concentrated (HCl) was added to the sol solutions. The direct band gap of the films was found to be around 3.7 eV, and their refractive index was found to vary from 2 to 2.4.