Hierarchically Porous Hollow TiO₂ Nanofibers Coupled with Fluorescence-Tuned Graphene Quantum Dots for Efficient Visible-Light Photocatalysis

Industrial dye wastewater poses severe environmental and health risks, creating an urgent demand for efficient and sustainable remediation technologies. Herein, hierarchically porous hollow TiO2 nanofibers (HNFTi) were constructed through electrospinning and coupled with blue-, green-, and orange-emissive graphene quantum dots (b-, g-, and o-GQDs) to fabricate visible-light-responsive heterojunction photocatalysts. By tailoring the surface functional groups and heteroatom doping of GQDs, a progressive fluorescence redshift was achieved, which effectively narrowed the bandgap and extended visible-light absorption. Benefiting from the synergistic effects of the hierarchically porous hollow TiO2 architecture and the fluorescence-tuned GQDs, the resulting composites exhibited enhanced light harvesting, accelerated charge separation, and improved interfacial charge transfer. Among them, the 0.5 wt% o-GQDs/HNFTi composite showed the best photocatalytic performance, delivering a methylene blue degradation efficiency of 99.5% within 2 h under visible-light irradiation, markedly higher than that of pristine HNFTi (77.7%). Photoelectrochemical and Kelvin probe force microscopy analyses further confirmed the promoted carrier dynamics and effective interfacial separation of photogenerated electron-hole pairs. This work provides a feasible strategy for integrating structural engineering and fluorescence modulation to develop high-performance TiO2-based photocatalysts for wastewater treatment.