A facile strategy to achieve monodispersity and stability of pigment TiO particles in low viscosity systems.

Stable dispersion of TiO particle is very desirable for its practical applications in various fields. It is a big challenge to stabilize pigment TiO with relatively large size (200-300 nm) in low viscosity (~10 cP) systems. In the current work, we introduced a general strategy using a hydrophobic-hydrophilic structure to achieve single-dispersed TiO particles with long storage stability in low viscosity systems. The modified TiO particles (~250 nm) can be re-dispersed into water/glycol ethers mixture to form single dispersed suspension without any additives. Our study shows that the dispersion can be stable at least 60 days at room temperature and the rheological property is similar to the Newtonian fluids showing an extremely low yield stress at relatively high solid concentration. This work is expected to introduce a new strategy to improve the dispersion stability of the large size nanoparticles in low viscosity systems.