Nanostructured Silica–Titania Hybrid using Dendritic Fibrous Nanosilica as a Photocatalyst

A new method has been developed to fabricate active TiO 2 photocatalysts by tuning the morphology of the catalyst support. A sustainable solution‐phase TiO 2 deposition on dendritic fibrous nanosilica (DFNS) protocol is developed, which is better than the complex and expensive atomic layer deposition technique. In general, catalytic activity decreases with an increased TiO 2 loading on conventional mesoporous silica because of the loss of the surface area caused by the blocking of pores. Notably, in the case of the dendritic fibrous nanosilica KCC‐1 as a support, because of its open fibrous morphology, even at the highest TiO 2 loading, a relatively large amount of surface area remained intact. This improved the accessibility of active sites, which increased the catalytic performance of the KCC‐1/TiO 2 photocatalyst. KCC‐1‐supported TiO 2 is a superior photocatalyst in terms of H 2 generation (26.4 mmol gTiO2−1  h −1 ) under UV light. This study may provide a new direction for photocatalyst development through the morphology control of the support.