In Situ Fabrication of Hierarchically Branched TiO2 Nanostructures: Enhanced Performance in Photocatalytic H2 Evolution and Li–Ion Batteries

1D branched TiO2 nanomaterials play a significant role in efficient photocatalysis and high-performance lithium ion batteries. In contrast to the typical methods which generally have to employ epitaxial growth, the direct in situ growth of hierarchically branched TiO2 nanofibers by a combination of the electrospinning technique and the alkali-hydrothermal process is presented in this work. Such the branched nanofibers exhibit improvement in terms of photocatalytic hydrogen evolution (0.41 mmol g−1 h−1), in comparison to the conventional TiO2 nanofibers (0.11 mmol g−1 h−1) and P25 (0.082 mmol g−1 h−1). Furthermore, these nanofibers also deliver higher lithium specific capacity at different current densities, and the specific capacity at the rate of 2 C is as high as 201. 0 mAh g−1, roughly two times higher than that of the pristine TiO2 nanofibers. © 2017 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.