Titanium IV oxide, also known as titanium dioxide, is a popular and versatile compound that is used in various industries. It is a white pigment and is commonly found in products such as sunscreen, paints, food coloring, and even in some medications. This versatile compound has unique properties that make it an essential ingredient in many products.

1: Flocculation principle

Fig. 5. ROS values (Abs of NBT) in samples of MSSA treated with A: 0.2 mg/mL P25TiO₂NPs; B: 0.02 mg/mL P25TiO₂NPs; C: 0.2 mg/mL VitaminB2@P25TiO₂NPs; D: 0.02 mg/mL VitaminB2@P25TiO₂NPs after 3 h of irradiation (red) and 6 h (blue). SD < 0.20 and p < 0.05 between C-D and A-B.

If you want to avoid titanium dioxide, read labels carefully and stick to minimally processed whole foods.

Acknowledgments

The analysis of the supernatant by UV–Vis spectrometry showed that each gram of P25TiO₂NP is loaded with 0.17 g of vitamin B2, after washing them. This value is coherent with the thermogram (Fig. 1), which showed a loss of 19% of weight, attributed to the thermal decomposition of vitamin B2.

Micronized titanium dioxide doesn’t penetrate skin so there’s no need to be concerned about it getting into your body. Even when titanium dioxide nanoparticles are used, the molecular size of the substance used to coat the nanoparticles is large enough to prevent them from penetrating beyond the uppermost layers of skin. This means you’re getting the sun protection titanium dioxide provides with no risk of it causing harm to skin or your body. The coating process improves application, enhances sun protection, and prevents the titanium dioxide from interacting with other ingredients in the presence of sunlight, thus enhancing its stability. It not only makes this ingredient much more pleasant to use for sunscreen, but also improves efficacy and eliminates safety concerns. Common examples of ingredients used to coat titanium dioxide are alumina, dimethicone, silica, and trimethoxy capryl silane.

Other food manufacturers use titanium dioxide to absorb water and keep moisture from clumping or degrading, Paul Westerhoff, PhD, an environmental engineer at Arizona State University who researches the biological and cellular effects of titanium dioxide, told Health.

This precipitate is not suitable for a pigment until it is filtered, dried, crushed, heated to a high temperature, and quenched in cold water. The second heating in a muffle furnace at 725 C produces crystals of the right optical size.

The basic scenario of resistive switching in TiO₂ (Jameson et al., 2007) assumes the formation and electromigration of oxygen vacancies between the electrodes (Baiatu et al., 1990), so that the distribution of concomitant n-type conductivity (Janotti et al., 2010) across the volume can eventually be controlled by an external electric bias, as schematically shown in Figure 1B. Direct observations with transmission electron microscopy (TEM) revealed more complex electroforming processes in TiO₂ thin films. In one of the studies, a continuous Pt filament between the electrodes was observed in a planar Pt/TiO₂/Pt memristor (Jang et al., 2016). As illustrated in Figure 1C, the corresponding switching mechanism was suggested as the formation of a conductive nanofilament with a high concentration of ionized oxygen vacancies and correspondingly reduced Ti³⁺ ions. These ions induce detachment and migration of Pt atoms from the electrode via strong metal–support interactions (Tauster, 1987). Another TEM investigation of a conductive TiO₂ nanofilament revealed it to be a Magnéli phase Ti_nO_2n−1 (Kwon et al., 2010). Supposedly, its formation results from an increase in the concentrations of oxygen vacancies within a local nanoregion above their thermodynamically stable limit. This scenario is schematically shown in Figure 1D. Other hypothesized point defect mechanisms involve a contribution of cation and anion interstitials, although their behavior has been studied more in tantalum oxide (Wedig et al., 2015; Kumar et al., 2016). The plausible origins and mechanisms of memristive switching have been comprehensively reviewed in topical publications devoted to metal oxide memristors (Yang et al., 2008; Waser et al., 2009; Ielmini, 2016) as well as TiO₂ (Jeong et al., 2011; Szot et al., 2011; Acharyya et al., 2014). The resistive switching mechanisms in memristive materials are regularly revisited and updated in the themed review publications (Sun et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2020).