Piezocatalysts have attracted much attention due to their excellent degradation ability for organics. In this work, three types of BaTiO 3 (BTO) nanostructures, including hydrothermally synthesized nanocubes (NCs), sol−gel calcined nanoparticles (NPs), and electrospun nanofibers (NFs), are prepared for catalyzing the dye degradation. Compared with the NCs and NPs, the NFs exhibit a higher piezocatalytic degradation performance due to the large specific surface area, fine crystal size, and easy deformation structure. Moreover, the kinetic factors, including initial dye concentration, ionic strength, ultrasonic power, and applied action, influencing the degradation performance of the BTO NFs are analyzed deeply. A high degradation rate constant of 0.0736 min −1 is achieved for rhodamine B, which is superior compared with the previous reports. The excellent stability of BTO NFs is demonstrated by the cycling tests, where a high degradation efficiency of 97.6% within 110 min is still obtained after the third cycle. Furthermore, the mechanism of piezocatalysis revealed that the hydroxyl and superoxide radicals are the main reactive species in the degradation process. This work is of importance for the development of high-performance piezocatalysts and highlights the potential of piezocatalysis for water remediation.
Recently, flexible tactile sensors have been widely concerned in many fields, including healthcare monitoring devices and wearable electronics. However, the fabrication of capacitive bionic tactile sensors with a wide linear sensing range and high sensitivity is a major difficulty. A flexible bionic sensor based on the octopus sucker microstructure that improves sensing performance by constructing a biomimetic body with a good microstructure was proposed in this study. The effect of the characteristic parameters of the sensor structure on the sensitivity is studied by simulations and experiments, and the sensor structure is optimized. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed octopus-inspired tactile sensor has a high sensitivity of 0.636 kPa −1 and a wide linear sensing range (8 Pa-500 kPa). Moreover, the tactile sensor has a rapid response time (∼40 ms), excellent repeatability, and outstanding durability (>6000 cycles), making it a reliable platform for monitoring human movements and bionic manipulator grasping objects. This study provides bionic tactile sensors with significant potential for innovative applications in future intelligent robotics and electronic skins.
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