Effects of anodizing potential and temperature on the growth of anodic TiO2 and its photoelectrochemical properties

Although nanoporous/nanotubular anodic TiO2 has been broadly investigated, there is still much to be learned about the fabrication, morphological characterization and applications of anodic TiO2 formed in the glycerol-based electrolyte. Nanoporous anodic titanium oxide (ATO) layers on Ti were prepared via a three-step anodization in a glycerol solution containing NH4F (0.38 wt%) and H2O (1.79 wt%). The effects of anodizing potential (30–70 V) and temperature (10–40 °C) on the growth and morphology of ATO layers were investigated in detail. The structural and morphological characterizations of received ATO layers were performed for the studied potentials and temperatures. Moreover, photoelectrochemical properties of formed TiO2 were studied as well. It has been shown, that the morphology of fabricated nanoporous ATO layers are strongly altered by anodizing temperature and potential. Particularly, an interesting finding is that the growth rate gradually increases up to 50 V independently of anodizing temperature and then decreases when anodizing potential increases to 70 V. Moreover, for all investigated anodizing temperatures, the structural features of ATO layers, such as the cell size, inner layer pore diameter, outer layer pore diameter, increase with increasing anodizing potential. The annealing of ATO samples synthesized at 20 °C revealed that the anatase grain size increases with increasing anodizing potential. It is noteworthy to mention that the highest photoconversion efficiency values were observed for samples synthesized at the anodizing temperature of 20 °C and 40 V.