Hierarchically porous TiO2/ SiO2 fibers with enhanced photocatalytic activity

While TiO2 nanoparticles are one of the most promising photocatalysts, their applications have been greatly hindered by easy aggregation. One of the effective routes to solve this problem is to incorporate them on/in a solid carrier. In this paper, we report the fabrication of hierarchically porous TiO2/SiO2 fibers via an electrospinning technique combined with subsequent high-temperature calcination treatment, in which the hierarchically porous SiO2 fibers confer a platform to assemble TiO2 nanoparticles with a uniform spatial distribution. The resultant hierarchically porous TiO2/SiO2 fibers have shown an enhanced photocatalytic activity with similar to 95% degradation of rhodamine B as compared to similar to 75% using our synthesized TiO2 nanoparticles and similar to 77% using commercially available Degussa P25 after 120 min illumination.