Dual templating synthesis of mesoporous titanium nitride microspheres

A study was conducted to demonstrate an ultrasonic spray pyrolysis (USP) preparation of hierarchically nanostructured titanium nitride (TiN) using an in situ dual templating from an initial soft liquid-core template and hard binary-oxide shell. The new synthetic approach helped in obtaining multimodal porous nanostructures without using any prestructured templates or additional template-removing procedures. Zinc titanate (Zn₂TiO₄) was used as a precursor to generate TiN in the synthetic approach. USP was used as an aqueous solution containing a simple Zinc salt to obtain zinc titanate, while the final TiN powder obtained after the nitration of hollow Zn ₂TiO₄ spheres exhibited a significant change in morphology and pore structure. High-resolution transmission electron microscopy (TEM) was also used to investigate the pore structure created during the heat-treatment, revealing that the hollow TiN sphere shell was perforated with a random network of mesopores.