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

Titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ) has been heavily investigated owing to its low cost, benign nature and strong photocatalytic ability. Thus, TiO 2 has broad applications including photocatalysts, Li-ion batteries, solar cells, medical research and so on. However, the performance of TiO 2 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 TiO 2 . This review mainly discusses the aspects of TiO 2 -modified nanoparticles including synthetic methods, modifications and applications.