Fabrication and characterization of potassium and sodium titanate via a hydrothermal method

Various sized titanate nanofibers were prepared by hydrothermal reaction of aqueous solutions containing the respective alkali (koh and naoh) and anatase in stoichiometric amounts at 170-200 °c for 96 h. their morphological and structural properties were characterized by many methods,including the powder x-ray diffraction (xrd),the scanning electron microscopy (sem),the fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ftir) and the uv/vis spectrophotometer. their morphologies depend on the experimental temperature and the solution conditions,in which the alkali metal plays an important role during the experimental process. when the size of titanate samples decrease,the uv-vis spectra are blue-shift. this work provided an effective hydrothermal method to synthesize titanate nanofibers,which may be applicable to fabrication of other nanomaterials.