TiO2 Film Photocatalysis Patents: Leaders, Trends & White Space 2026
- Filing has flattened, not grown. activity peaked at 5 families in 2020 and the 2022 midpoint sits at the same level, with no assignee showing momentum in the latest tracked year.
- China dominates the filing venue. 77 of the tracked receiving-office filings are in China, more than three times the US total of 23, pointing to where enforcement and freedom-to-operate risk concentrate.
- Catalysis claims outweigh coating claims two-to-one. B01J (catalytic process) appears in 101 records versus 45 for C23C (deposition/coating), meaning most protected value sits in how the photocatalyst reacts, not just how the film is laid down.
Filing growth compares 2021 (5 records) with 2024 (1) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 143 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
A mature, narrowly-claimed field with a long co-filing tail
Titanium dioxide film and photocatalysis patenting spans 143 families filed between 2015 and the 2026 data cut-off, concentrated in inorganic compound chemistry, catalytic processes and thin-film deposition. The technology sits at the intersection of materials synthesis (anatase phase control, doping) and applied coatings (self-cleaning glass, water treatment surfaces), which is why IPC codes span eight subclasses from B01J catalysis through to C04B ceramics.
Filing volume peaked in 2020 and has not exceeded that level since; the most recent year is necessarily undercounted because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months. Co-assignee activity is thin — only 10 pairs of joint filers appear across the whole dataset — which suggests most work here is done by single institutions rather than through formal research partnerships.
Filing trend and technology composition
The underlying counts are patent families, which is the fairer unit here since it removes the distortion of multiple continuations or parallel jurisdictional filings inflating any single assignee's apparent output.
Flat filing since the 2020 peak
Annual filings rose to 5 in 2020, held at 5 through the 2022 midpoint, and show no assignee with positive momentum in the latest full year — a pattern consistent with a technology whose core claim space is already staked out rather than one still being actively built up.
Catalysis and compound chemistry lead, coating trails
B01J (chemical/physical catalytic processes) covers 101 of the 143 records and C01G (compounds of other metals) covers 49, well ahead of C23C coating/deposition at 45. Downstream application codes — C03C glass, C02F water treatment, C09D coatings/paints — each sit well below 30, indicating that application-specific claims are comparatively sparse relative to the core material and process claims.
Shares are the percentage of the 143 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Titanium Dioxide Films and Photocatalysis with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about titanium dioxide films and photocatalysis and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited records anchor the field's foundational claims
In-situ doping method for uniform dopant dispersion in TiO2 film
A method of producing a titanium dioxide film with dopant uniformly dispersed throughout the entirety of the film. The method involves deposition of dopant, concurrently or sequentially, with titanium before oxidation of the titanium, removing the need for a separate doping step. The amount of dopant is controllable by varying the thickness and/or number of dopant layers, and dispersion throughout the film is more uniform than in prior sequential-doping approaches.Filed by Nanyang Polytechnic — illustrates how process-sequencing claims (doping concurrent with oxidation) can sit alongside, rather than compete with, material-composition claims.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6387844B1 | Titanium dioxide photocatalyst | 138 |
| 2 | US20090286676A1 | PRODUCTION METHOD OF TITANIUM DIOXIDE (TiO2) PHOTOCATALYST AND TiO2 PHOTOCATALYST PRODUCED BY THE SAME | 51 |
| 3 | CN1608727A | 一种负载型TiO2光催化剂及其制备方法 | 42 |
| 4 | US20040202890A1 | Methods of making crystalline titania coatings | 37 |
| 5 | US6939611B2 | Window glass employing titanium dioxide photocatalyst | 37 |
| 6 | WO2008076082A1 | Microsphere tio2 photocatalyst | 33 |
| 7 | CN1354042A | 二氧化钛光催化空气净化薄膜及其制备方法 | 31 |
| 8 | CN1583252A | 可见光响应型二氧化钛光触媒室内空气净化剂的制备方法 | 30 |
| 9 | JP1999092176A | Photocatalytic film and its production | 30 |
| 10 | US20020107144A1 | Illuminating devices and window glasses employing titanium dioxide photocatalysts | 28 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had longer to accumulate citations; treat this as a measure of foundational influence, not of current commercial relevance.
Patent titles are shown in the language they were filed in, not translated, so that each record stays verifiable against the original filing — a translated title will not match in Eureka or in any national register. Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Put your own technology through the same analysis
Eureka on the web
When you want the answer in the next five minutes.
The agent works the prompt against patents and technical literature, citing every source.
Run your analysis now →MCP server & REST API
When it has to run inside your own pipeline.
Patent search, landscape analysis and assignee resolution as MCP tools. Drop them into any agent framework, or call REST directly.
Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three patterns matter more than the headline family count: where filings are concentrated by venue, how the IPC mix splits between process and application, and how thin the collaboration layer is.
China is the primary battleground for freedom-to-operate
With 77 filings against 23 in the United States and single digits elsewhere, most enforceable rights and most prior art a new filer must clear sit in the Chinese patent register, not the US or European ones.
Process claims outnumber deposition claims more than two to one
The claim density sits heavier on how the photocatalyst is activated and reacts than on how the film is physically deposited, which shifts where a new entrant's differentiation is likely to be tested.
Joint filing is rare; most work is institution-led
Only a handful of co-assignee pairs recur, and the strongest pairings top out at 6 shared families, suggesting the field is largely built from single-institution filing programmes rather than cross-company alliances.
No assignee shows current-year momentum
Every leading assignee in the ranking recorded zero filings in the most recent tracked year, though this is partly an artefact of publication lag; it still means the visible pipeline shows no active leader pulling ahead right now.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to titanium dioxide films and photocatalysis, with the prior art for and against each one.
A concentrated core with a long single-filer tail
The assignee ranking is topped by a small group of universities and research institutes rather than a single dominant commercial player, with co-filing pairs linking a few of them together.
Research-institute pairings anchor the top of the ranking
The strongest joint-filing relationships link a national research institute with a chemical manufacturer, and a technological university with a US research foundation, each sharing 6 families — the densest collaboration signal in the dataset.
Filing is international but not evenly so
Beyond the China and US totals, South Korea, PCT/WIPO, Japan and India each register single-digit shares, meaning most assignees are choosing a small number of jurisdictions rather than filing broadly.
Downstream application claims remain a minority share
Water-treatment (C02F) and coatings/paints (C09D) codes together account for well under a third of the corpus, leaving room for application-specific claims that go beyond the core catalytic-material filings.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Kanagawa Academy of Science and Technology | 0 | — |
| Tsinghua University | 0 | — |
| Nippon Soda Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Nanyang Technological University | 0 | — |
| The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University | 0 | — |
| Fudan University | 0 | — |
| University of Jinan | 0 | — |
| Nanchang University | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, white-space filing, or licensing strategy.
Map claim scope against the top-cited records
Before drafting new claims, check how the highest-cited filings — several dating to the early 2000s — have been construed, since their broad foundational language still shapes what counts as novel.
Explore claim charts in EurekaTest white-space claims against the full IPC spread
The under-claimed branches identified here are relative to this corpus only; a full freedom-to-operate check should run the same search logic against adjacent IPC codes before committing to a filing strategy.
Run a deeper search in EurekaCommon questions about TiO2 film and photocatalysis patents
The assignee ranking is led by a mix of Asian universities and research institutes rather than a single dominant corporation, with the strongest collaborative pairs — such as a national research institute filing jointly with a chemical manufacturer — sharing up to 6 families. No single assignee shows filing activity in the most recent tracked year, so leadership by volume does not currently translate into visible momentum. Anyone assessing licensing risk should look at the full ranking table rather than assume one company controls the space.
Filing activity peaked at 5 families in 2020 and held at the same level through the 2022 midpoint, which points to a flat rather than growing trend. Because publication typically lags filing by about 18 months, the most recent year or two in any dataset will always look artificially quiet, so the true 2025-2026 picture is likely understated here. Even allowing for that lag, the absence of any accelerating assignee suggests the field has settled rather than being in an active build-out phase.
Coating and deposition claims, filed under IPC code C23C, cover how the titanium dioxide film is physically applied to a substrate — sputtering, sol-gel, or similar deposition uniformity techniques. Catalytic process claims, filed under B01J, cover how the film behaves once deposited, including dopant chemistry and reaction mechanisms, and outnumber coating claims more than two to one in this corpus. A new filing strategy should identify which side of that split its innovation actually sits on, since prior art density differs significantly between the two.
China accounts for 77 of the tracked receiving-office filings, more than three times the United States total of 23, with South Korea, WIPO/PCT, Japan and India each contributing single digits. This means most enforceable rights and most prior art a new entrant needs to clear are registered in China rather than in Western jurisdictions. Companies planning to commercialise or license technology in this space should prioritise Chinese-language prior art searches and local counsel review.
US20120237424A1, assigned to Nanyang Polytechnic, claims a method of producing a titanium dioxide film with dopant deposited concurrently or sequentially with titanium before oxidation, so no separate doping step is needed. It specifically covers in-situ doping during the oxidation process and control of dopant distribution via layer thickness and count. It does not block doping methods that introduce dopant after the film is already formed and oxidised, which remains a distinct technical route outside this claim's scope.
Research Titanium Dioxide Films and Photocatalysis in depth with Eureka
Go past this page: query the whole titanium dioxide films and photocatalysis corpus yourself, in your own scope.
Every answer comes back with patent numbers you can open.
Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.