Preparation And Properties Of Titanium Dioxide Thin Films

Titanium dioxide thin film plays an important role in thin film solar cells, and has promising future in everyday applications including air cleaning and self-cleaning glass. Tetrabutyl titanate was used as the precursor solution for titanium dioxide, and the electrostatic spraying method was used to fabricate titanium dioxide thin film on BK7 glass. We found that when the flow was 60μl/min, the voltage was 20 kV, and the height was 3 cm. Dense and uniform titanium dioxide thin film could be fabricated. X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) results showed that the electrospraying deposited titanium dioxide thin film, after sintering, had single crystal anatase crystal structure, which is suitable for most applications of the thin film. We also analyzed the transmission and smoothness of the titanium dioxide thin film. The ultraviolet visible spectrometer test results showed that the titanium dioxide thin film asmple has high light transmission. Atom force microscopy (AFM) test results showed that the smoothness was pretty good.With the concepts of flexible solar cells and wearable devices being more and more popular, there is increasing interest to coat titanium dioxide thin films on flexible substrates, such as aluminum foils. Many methods have been used to fabricate titanium dioxide thin films, such as dip-coating, spin coating, electrospraying, and so on. Among them, electrospraying is especially suitable for thin film deposition on flexible substrates. We studied the fabrication of dense and uniform titanium dioxide thin films on flexible aluminum foil using multi-jet electrospraying technique. Flat as well as folded aluminum foils were used as the deposition substrates. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) results showed that the thin films deposited on both flat and folded aluminum foils were continuous, uniform and dense, with no pinholes found. The thin film thickness and morphology did not change before and after tape peeling tests, proving good adhesion of the titanium dioxide thin film to the aluminum substrate. These experiments show exciting results of titanium dioxide thin film deposition on flexible substrates, and could have promising applications in the near future.