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

In this work, the mesoporous-assembled TiO2 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 TiO2 nanocrystals were characterized by various techniques, i.e. N2 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 TiO2 nanocrystals with very narrow pore size distribution. The synthesized mesoporous-assembled TiO2 nanocrystals were applied for hydrogen production from the photocatalytic water splitting. The photocatalytic activity results revealed that the synthesized mesoporous-assembled TiO2 nanocrystals possessed much higher hydrogen production activity than the commercially available P-25 TiO2 and ST-01 TiO2 powders.