Physics education research, electronic materials, and the musings of Christopher Moore, Ph.D.

It took an entire bag of Sweet Sixteens and a full day of stirring, filtering, and baking. However, it appears that we have been successful in our first attempt at extracting TiO2 nanoparticles from powdered sugar doughnuts.

The above image shows a thin film of TiO2 nanoparticles. We plan on characterization after the July 4th holiday.

I’ve discussed this project before. However, we have just recently gotten around to doing it. The process was pretty easy:

(1) Remove powdered sugar from doughnuts.
(2) Dissolve in water. (We used a hot plate with magnetic stirring bar.)
(3) Filter. Water soluble sugar filters into beaker, leaving behind an gunky white paste composed of TiO2 and organics like oils, etc.
(4) Allow paste to dry.
(5) Pre-heat in over around 100 degrees Celsius for a few hours. This is important, since we discovered that skipping this step results in a smoke filled, stinky lab!
(6) High temperature bake at 500 degrees Celsius for about an hour to burn off remaining organics.
(7) Remove TiO2 nanoparticle powder!

To make films, the next step would be to dissolve your powder in Vodka or some other high-proof alcohol. Then, dropcast layers on a substrate, allowing to dry between treatments.

Dye-sensitizing can actually make these films into pretty decent solar cells. We’re not as interested in that in my lab, but we are interested in ultraviolet photodetectors. Next week, we see how photodetectory we can get these films!

UPDATE: We now have atomic force microscopy (AFM) images of our first batch of TiO2 nanoparticles. You can see clumps of ~100-200 nm diameter particles deposited on a glass substrate.

8x8 square micrometer AFM image of TiO2 nanoparticles extracted from powdered sugar doughnuts