Probing the Local Environment of Ti3+ Ions in TiO2 (Rutile) by 17O HYSCORE

17O hyperfine sublevel correlation spectroscopy was used to monitor the local environment of stable Ti3+ ions generated in a 17O-enriched polycrystalline TiO2 (rutile) sample (see picture). A hyperfine interaction of about 8 MHz is found, which is analogous to that observed for molecular Ti3+ aqua complex cations and suggests a localized nature of the unpaired electron wave function for these centers at 4 K.