Review on tribocatalysis through harvesting friction energy for mechanically-driven dye decomposition

Friction exists everywhere. Tribocatalytic dye decomposition is a recent and promising wastewater treatment technology, in which the ordinary phenomenon of mechanical friction in life is utilized to generate some positive and negative charges based on triboelectrification. These charges further react with the OH- and dissolved ·O2 in dye solution to produce some active species with strong redox abilities, which decompose organic dye molecular. Recent studies have shown that tribocatalysis technology not only excels in dye degradation but also demonstrates broad application prospects in energy conversion, antibacterial activity, and nitrogen fixation. However, there are still few reviews on the types of materials used in tribocatalysis and the methods to enhance its performance. This review aims to provide a comprehensive conclusion on tribocatalysis and to analyze these current methods to enhance tribocatalysis performance including mixing carbon, doping with metal elements, surface engineering, composition modification, polarization treatments, the construction of heterogeneous structures, and introducing oxygen vacancies. This review provides the view on the development and application status of nanomaterial-based tribocatalysis in harvesting friction energy to mechanically decompose dye, offering a potential technological pathway for practical wastewater treatment in the future.