Efficient degradation of organics by ultrasonic piezoelectric effect on CuO-BTO/AFC composite

Haoyang Feng; Zhi Zhang; Hongxiang Deng; Sean Li; Xiaotao Zu; Zongwei Mei

doi:10.1088/1361-6528/ad2c55

Efficient degradation of organics by ultrasonic piezoelectric effect on CuO-BTO/AFC composite

Nanotechnology. 2024 Mar 27;35(24). doi: 10.1088/1361-6528/ad2c55.

Authors

Haoyang Feng¹, Zhi Zhang², Hongxiang Deng³, Sean Li⁴, Xiaotao Zu³, Zongwei Mei³

Affiliations

¹ School of Mechatronic Engineering, Shenzhen Polytechnic, Shenzhen 518055, People's Republic of China.
² CIMC Vehicle (Group) Co., Ltd, Shenzhen 518067, People's Republic of China.
³ Yangtze Delta Region Institute (Huzhou) & School of Physics, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Huzhou 313001, People's Republic of China.
⁴ School of Material Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia.

PMID: 38387088
DOI: 10.1088/1361-6528/ad2c55

Abstract

The recombination of photoexcited electron-hole pairs greatly limits the degradation performance of photocatalysts. Ultrasonic cavitation and internal electric field induced by the piezoelectric effect are helpful for the separation of electron-hole pairs and degradation efficiency. The activated foam carbon (AFC) owing to its high surface area is often used as the substrate to grow catalysts to provide more reactive active sites. In this work, CuO@BaTiO₃(CuO@BTO) heterostructure is prepared by hydrothermal method on the surface of AFC to investigate the ultrasonic piezoelectric catalysis effect. X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy, energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were used to analyze the structure and morphology of CuO-BTO/AFC composite. It is found that the CuO-BTO/AFC composite exhibits excellent piezo-catalytic performance for the degradation of organics promoted by ultrasonic vibration. The CuO-BTO/AFC composite can decompose methyl orange and methylene blue with degradation efficiency as high as 93.9% and 97.6% within 25 min, respectively. The mechanism of piezoelectricity enhanced ultrasound supported catalysis effect of system CuO-BTO/AFC is discussed. The formed heterojunction structure between BTO and CuO promotes the separation of positive and negative charges caused by the piezoelectric effect.

Keywords: CuO-BTO/ACF composite; mechanism; organic degradation; ultrasonic piezoelectric effect.