High quality potassium hexatitanate whiskers were hydrothermally synthesized in one step under moderate temperature and pressure condi-tions. Effects of the titanium source and reaction conditions on the hydrothermal reaction rate, product phase component, and morphology of whiskers were investigated. The results show that the reactivity of hydrated titania, anatase TiO2, and rutile TiO2 with KOH decreases in turn, and with hydrated titania as titanium source, it is difficult to obtain potassium hexatitanate whiskers with good morphology. In contrast, uni-form potassium hexatitanate whiskers with a length of 10-20 μm and a diameter of 200-700 nm were obtained using anatase TiO2 as titanium source. The investigation demonstrates that the initial KOH concentration, annealing temperature and time, molar ratio of K2O/TiO2, etc. sig-nificantly affect the morphology of the as-synthesized whiskers. The optimized synthesis condition is as follows: anatase as a titanium source; 10 wt.% KOH solution; annealing temperature and time of 300°C and 5 h, respectively; K2O/TiO2 molar ratio of 5, etc. A rhombic potassium hexatitanate was prepared under the optimum condition and the whisker grew along the [110] direction. The reaction mechanism was dis-cussed.
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