Supporting Information for Self-assembly and activation of a titania-nanotube based photocatalyst for H 2 evolution Fan Fu, ab Zhenni Wu, a Gihoon Cha a and Patrik Schmuki* ac a Department of Materials Science WW-4, LKO, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Martensstrasse 7, 91058 Erlangen, Germany; b National Engineering Laboratory for Modern Silk, College of Textile and Clothing Engineering, Soochow University, Suzhou 215123, PR China; c Regional Centre of Advanced Technologies and Materials, Faculty of Science, Palacký University Olomouc, Šlechtitelů 27, 783 71 Olomouc, Czech Republic. * Corresponding author: schmuki@ww.uni-erlangen.de Experimental details: Preparing of TiO 2 nanotube layers Self–organized TiO 2 nanotubes were grown from titanium foil (1 mm, Advent, 99.8%) by electrochemical anodization. Before anodization, Ti foil was cleaned in an ultrasonic bath with acetone, ethanol, and deionized water for 15 minutes each, and then dried by N 2 stream. The anodization process was carried out in a traditional two-electrode configuration system that uses Ti foil as the working electrode and platinum plate as Electronic Supplementary Material (ESI) for ChemComm. This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2021