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

Abstract 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.