Strong tribocatalytic dye decomposition through utilizing triboelectric energy of barium strontium titanate nanoparticles

Flammable gases produced by TiO2 nanoparticles under magnetic stirring in water

“…dye degradation by magnetic stirring [17][18][19][20][21]. In this study, we have also conducted some tests to employ four magnetic stirring rods simultaneously to stir TiO 2 nanoparticles in water and some results are shown in Fig.…”

“…For two materials in dynamic friction, electron-hole pairs can be excited in one material by the mechanical kinetic energy it absorbs from the other material in friction [26]. Exactly based on such excitation of electron-hole pairs in BST, a tribocatalytic mechanism has recently been proposed for the degradation of organic dyes by BST nanoparticles under magnetic stirring [17]. Similarly, for the production of flammable gases by TiO 2 nanoparticles in this study, it is reasonable to assume that electronhole pairs are excited in TiO 2 by the mechanical energy it absorbed through friction, which can be expressed as:…”

“…Very recently, magnetic stirring has been discovered to be able to drive nanomaterials to degrade organic pollutants in a quite unexpected way: For Ba 0.75 Sr 0.25 TiO 3 (BST) nanoparticles under magnetic stirring, the friction between BST and Teflon surface of magnetic stirring rods rather than the deformation of BST nanoparticles has been revealed responsible for the observed degradation of organic dyes [17]. Through friction, it should be possible for some non-piezoelectric materials, such as TiO 2 nanoparticles, to degrade organic dyes under magnetic stirring in dark.…”

“…These non-piezoelectric materials have been quite neglected in researches on harvesting mechanical energy. More interestingly, as the friction between nanoparticles and Teflon magnetic stirring rods can be dramatically enhanced through increasing contents of nanoparticles and through employing multiple magnetic stirring rods simultaneously, highly accelerated degradation of organic dyes has been observed for BST nanoparticles [17], BiOIO 3 nanoparticles [18], zinc oxide nanorods [19], CdS nanowires [20], and Bi 2 WO 6 nanoflowers [21] under magnetic stirring. These results clearly demonstrate that through friction, mechanical energy of low-frequency motions can be effectively converted by some nanomaterials to chemical energy, which has been termed as tribocatalysis [17] and should be highly interesting from the viewpoint of harvesting mechanical energy in ambient environments.…”

Demonstration of Enhanced Piezo-Catalysis for Hydrogen Generation and Water Treatment at the Ferroelectric Curie Temperature

“…However, recent work has shown that it is possible to generate hydrogen by simply placing ferroelectric particles in direct contact with water and subjecting them to cyclic heating and cooling (Belitz et al, 2017;Xu et al, 2018b;You et al, 2018a). As a model ferroelectric material, barium titanate has often been explored for tribo- (Li et al, 2019), piezo- (Belitz et al, 2017;Feng et al, 2019;Hong et al, 2010, ll OPEN ACCESS 2012;Jin et al, 2019;Pan et al, 2019;Wu et al, 2018a), and pyroelectric catalysis (Benke et al, 2015;Xia et al, 2017). This is primarily due to its lead-free nature, low-cost, and ease of manufacture in a wide variety of forms, such as nanofibers (Wu et al, 2018a;Xia et al, 2017), composites (Min et al, 2018), and particles (Belitz et al, 2017), which can be decorated with semiconductors to enhance catalytic performance.…”