A new one-pot synthesis route to produce silica nano-layer capped titania (SiO2 TiO2) nanorods, a TiO2-based nanocomposite photocatalyst, has been developed by means of a non-aqueous solution method. The whole of the TiO2 rod is covered with a heterogeneous SiO2 layer except at the two ends. The simultaneous development of a SiO2 nano-layer onto an evolutional TiO2 nanorod highly depends on the mole ratio of the starting reagents. Additionally, in the study of the adsorption of rhodantine-6G (R-6G) by SiO2 TiO2 nanorods, the spectra data confirms that the SiO2 nano-layer can noticeably accumulate the adsorbed concentration of R-6G on the surface Of SiO2 TiO2 nanorods, which offers a critical example to explain why the SiO2 layer can enhance the photodecomposition rates of TiO2 based photocatalysts. Under UV irradiation (lambda = 254 nm), the photodecomposition rates of R-6G for the SiO2 TiO2 samples (0.0242 min(-1)) are about 3-6 times faster than that of the particulate TiO2 (4.0 x 10(-3) min(-1)) and SiO2/TiO2 (=25/75) (6.7 x 10(-3) min(-1)) xerogel photocatalysts. The process of uniformly growing SiO2 nano-layer onto TiO2 based nanocomposite photocatalyst also demonstrates that the existence Of SiO2 layer is beneficial for the photocatalysis efficiency but the improvement of photocatalysis efficiency is not proportional to the thickness Of SiO2 layer. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.