Morphology and structural development of reduced anatase-TiO2 by pure Ti powder upon annealing and nitridation: Synthesis of TiOx and TiOxNy powders

It is well known that nitriding of titanium is suitable for surface coating of biomaterials and in other applications such as anti-reflective coating, while oxygen-rich titanium oxynitride has been applied in thin film resistors and photocatalysis. Thus in this work anatase was reduced with pure titanium powder during annealing in argon. This was done to avoid any metallic contamination and unwanted residual metal doping. As a result, interesting and different types of particle morphology were synthesized when the pre-milled elemental anatase and titanium powders were mixed. The formation of metastable face centred cubic and monoclinic titanium monoxide was detected by the X-ray diffraction technique. The phases were confirmed by energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy analysis. Raman analysis revealed weak intensity peaks for samples annealed in argon as compared to those annealed under nitrogen.