Glycerol as an efficient mesopore-controlling agent for synthesis of mesoporous-assembled TiO2 nanocrystals and their remarkable photocatalytic H2 production activity

Abstract In this work, the mesoporous-assembled TiO 2 nanocrystals were successfully synthesized by a modified sol–gel process under mild conditions with the aid of glycerol, which is a main by-product from biodiesel production via the transesterification of vegetable oils. The synthesized TiO 2 nanocrystals were characterized by various techniques, i.e. N 2 adsorption–desorption, SEM, high resolution TEM, and XRD. The characterization results clearly showed that the glycerol could behave as an efficient mesopore-controlling agent, which induced the mesoporous-assembled characteristic of the synthesized TiO 2 nanocrystals with very narrow pore size distribution. The synthesized mesoporous-assembled TiO 2 nanocrystals were applied for hydrogen production from the photocatalytic water splitting. The photocatalytic activity results revealed that the synthesized mesoporous-assembled TiO 2 nanocrystals possessed much higher hydrogen production activity than the commercially available P-25 TiO 2 and ST-01 TiO 2 powders.