The Occurrence of Titanium Dioxide

Titanium dioxide occurs in nature as well-known minerals rutile, anatase and brookite, and additionally as two high pressure forms, a monoclinic baddeleyite-like form and an orthorhombic α-PbO2-like form, both found recently at the Ries crater in Bavaria. The most common form is rutile, which is also the equilibrium phase at all temperatures. The metastable anatase and brookite phases both convert to rutile upon heating. Rutile, anatase and brookite all contain six coordinated titanium.

Titanium dioxide has eight modifications – in addition to rutile, anatase and brookite there are three metastable forms produced synthetically (monoclinic, tetragonal and orthorombic), and five high pressure forms (α-PbO2-like, baddeleyite-like, cotunnite-like, orthorhombic OI, and cubic phases).

The cotunnite-type phase was claimed by L. Dubrovinsky and co-authors to be the hardest known oxide with the Vickers hardness of 38 GPa and the bulk modulus of 431 GPa (i.e. close to diamond's value of 446 GPa) at atmospheric pressure. However, later studies came to different conclusions with much lower values for both the hardness (7–20 GPa, which makes it softer than common oxides like corundum Al2O3 and rutile TiO2) and bulk modulus (~300 GPa).

The naturally occurring oxides can be mined and serve as a source for commercial titanium. The metal can also be mined from other minerals such as ilmenite or leucoxene ores, or one of the purest forms, rutile beach sand. Star sapphires and rubies get their asterism from rutile impurities present in them.

Titanium dioxide (B) is found as a mineral in magmatic rocks and hydrothermal veins, as well as weathering rims on perovskite. TiO2 also forms lamellae in other minerals. Spectral lines from titanium oxide are prominent in class M stars, which are cool enough to allow molecules of this chemical to form.

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