Epoxide-Assisted Synthesis of Photocatalytically Active TiO2 and Pt/TiO2 Aerogels

For the first time, amorphous TiO2 aerogels with a high specific surface area (420 m2/g) and low geometric density (~0.1 g/cm3) were obtained using epoxide-induced gelation in N,N-dimethylformamide. Impregnation of the resulting aerogels with aqueous solutions of H2PtCl6 and NaBH4 followed by thermal annealing made it possible to obtain Pt/TiO2 photocatalysts, which showed very high activity for titanium dioxide–based aerogels in the generation of hydrogen from aqueous alcohol solutions (~5 $${\text{mmo}}{{{\text{l}}}_{{{{{\text{H}}}_{{\text{2}}}}}}}$$ h–1 g–1).