Surface-Mediated Growth of Transparent, Oriented, and Well-Defined Nanocrystalline Anatase Titania Films

A new, surface-mediated method to grow transparent, oriented, and well-defined nanocrystalline anatase TiO2 films has been developed. The morphology of crystals is tunable from octahedral pyramids to truncate octahedral pyramids. These novel nanocrystalline films could have implications not only for practical applications but also for understanding the structure and orientation dependent properties of the important anatase material.