TiO2 aerogels were obtained by supercritical evacuation of solvent fro
m gels prepared through HCl controlled hydrolysis condensation reactio
ns of titanium isopropoxide in isopropanol. XRD line broadening analys
is was used to characterize powders resulting from the calcination of
aerogels. Because of diffraction lines overlapping at high angles, the
separation between crystallite size and microstrain effects could not
be satisfactorily achieved by pattern decomposition. Whole pattern fi
tting was then used to demonstrate that TiO2 nanocrystals are practica
lly free of microstrain. According to this result, the analysis of int
egral widths based on peak by peak fitting was performed to analyze th
e observed anisotropic size effect of prismatic shaped titanium oxide
crystals, approximately 30 by 15 by 15 nanometers in size. These resul
ts are in good agreement with High Resolution Transmission Electron Mi
croscopy observations.