Synthesis, modification and application of titanium dioxide nanoparticles: a review.

Titanium dioxide (TiO2) has been heavily investigated owing to its low cost, benign nature and strong photocatalytic ability. Thus, TiO2 has broad applications including photocatalysts, Li-ion batteries, solar cells, medical research and so on. However, the performance of TiO2 is not satisfactory due to many factors such as the broad band gap (3.01 to 3.2 eV) and fast recombination of electron-hole pairs (10-12 to 10-11 s). Plenty of work has been undertaken to improve the properties, such as structural and dopant modifications, which broaden the applications of TiO2. This review mainly discusses the aspects of TiO2-modified nanoparticles including synthetic methods, modifications and applications.