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.