Nature of Interactions at the Interface of Two Water-Saturated Commercial TiO2 Polymorphs

Two commercial TiO2 samples, a 100% anatase and a 100% rutile, were used for the fast field cycling NMR experiments. The results showed a different behavior between the different samples. In particular, water molecules were unbonded to the solid surface for the rutile sample, whereas they appeared to chemically interact with the surface through H-bond formation with the anatase sample. The above findings accord with the generally lower activity of rutile with respect to anatase reported in literature for photocatalytic oxidation reactions in water. The difficulty of water to interact with rutile surface, indeed, could hinder the formation of OH radicals, which are the most important oxidant species.