Abstract
Because of their low cost, natural abundance, environmental benignity, plentiful polymorphs, good chemical stability and excellent optical properties, TiO2 materials are of great importance in the areas of physics, chemistry and material science. Much effort has been devoted to the synthesis of TiO2 nanomaterials for various applications. Among them, mesoporous TiO2 materials, especially with hierarchically porous structures, show great potential owing to their extraordinarily high surface areas, large pore volumes, tunable pore structures and morphologies, and nanoscale effects. This review aims to provide an overview of the synthesis and applications of hierarchically mesoporous TiO2 materials. In the first section, the general synthetic strategies for hierarchically mesoporous TiO2 materials are reviewed. After that, we summarize the architectures of hierarchically mesoporous TiO2 materials, including nanofibers, nanosheets, microparticles, films, spheres, core-shell and multi-level structures. At the same time, the corresponding mechanisms and the key factors for the controllable synthesis are highlighted. Following this, the applications of hierarchically mesoporous TiO2 materials in terms of energy storage and environmental protection, including photocatalytic degradation of pollutants, photocatalytic fuel generation, photoelectrochemical water splitting, catalyst support, lithium-ion batteries and sodium-ion batteries, are discussed. Finally, we outline the challenges and future directions of research and development in this area.
Highlights
Because of their low cost, natural abundance, environmental benignity, plentiful polymorphs, good chemical stability and excellent optical properties, TiO2 materials are of great importance in the areas of physics, chemistry and material science
This review aims to provide an overview of the synthesis and applications of hierarchically mesoporous TiO2 materials
We summarize the architectures of hierarchically mesoporous TiO2 materials, including nanofibers, nanosheets, microparticles, films, spheres, core-shell and multi-level structures
Summary
Since the first discovery of photocatalytic water splitting on a TiO2 electrode under ultraviolet (UV) light, TiO2 materials have been widely investigated over the past few decades due to their unique properties such as non-toxicity, abundance, easy availability and stability [1,2]. TiO2 materials present great potential in applications from the conventional areas (e.g. pigment, cosmetic and toothpaste) to the latest developed areas including catalysis, energy storage and conversion, biomedicine, environmental remediation and so on [3,4]. Mesoporous TiO2 materials, especially with hierarchically mesoporous structures, have received increasing interest due to their attractive features, such as high surface areas, large pore volumes, tunable pore structures and nano-confined effects [8,9,10,11]. Those features enable the high performances of hierarchically mesoporous TiO2 materials in many areas. The large pore volume has shown great potential in the loading of guest species and the accommodation of structural change, and the
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