Growth of Epitaxial Anatase TiO2(001) Thin Film on NaCl(001) Substrate by Ion Beam Sputtering and Thermal Annealing

The anatase TiO2(001) surface was shown to have superior photoreactivity. Epitaxial anatase (001) films used to be grown on single-crystal SrTiO3 and LaAlO3 substrates. It is shown in this report that these films can be grown also on the NaCl substrate, which is much cheaper and easily prepared. Epitaxial TiO(001) films were first grown on the NaCl(001) substrate. By testing the TiO-to-anatase transformation over temperature and time ranges, an epitaxial anatase (001) film was prepared by simple thermal oxidation in air. The formation of a single-variant anatase (001) film instead of a multiple-variant film is discussed in this report.