Hydrogen Generation and Degradation of Organic Dyes by New Piezocatalytic 0.7BiFeO3–0.3BaTiO3 Nanoparticles with Proper Band Alignment

Piezoelectric materials have recently demonstrated their potential applications in clean energy exploration and environmental remediation through triggering a number of catalytic reactions by harvesting waste vibrational energy in the environment. In this work, unique lead-free 0.7BiFeO 3 –0.3BaTiO 3 (BF–BT) nanoparticles with tuned band structure were synthesized by the hydrothermal method for use as piezoelectric catalysts to generate hydrogen by splitting water; a high production rate of 1.322 mmol/g was achieved in 1 h, which is 10 times higher than the production rate of pure BiFeO 3 . Of particular interest, BF–BT particles attached to nickel mesh have the ability to degrade rhodamine B in flowing water, demonstrating their potential to treat polluted water by anchoring BF–BT in drains. Finally, we propose novel insight on the piezocatalytic mechanism, which is based on the internal electric field (the sum of the depolarization field and the screening charge field) that drives electron/hole separation and movement.