Titanium dioxide can form several different shapes, which have different properties. Some shapes can be converted to nanomaterials. Micronized TiO2 (also called “nano” or “nanoparticles”) was introduced in the early 1990s.Nanotechnology and micronization both refer to the practice of creating very small particles sizes of a given material. “Nanoparticles” usually refers to particles smaller than 100 nanometers; a nanometer is 1/1 billionth of a meter. At these small sizes, and at low concentrations, titanium dioxide appears transparent, allowing for effective sunscreens that do not appear white.

Titanium dioxide (TiO₂) is a multifunctional semiconductor that exists in three crystalline forms: anatase, rutile, and brookite. Owing to an appropriate combination of physical and chemical properties, environmental compatibility, and low production cost, polycrystalline TiO₂ has found a large variety of applications and is considered to be a promising material for future technologies. One of the most distinctive physical properties of this material is its high photocatalytic activity (Nam et al., 2019); however, more recently it has attracted growing interest because of its resistive switching abilities (Yang et al., 2008).

Why Did Europe Ban Titanium Dioxide?