Strategies for enhancing activities of typical piezo-photocatalytic material and its applications in environmental remediation: A review

As an advanced oxidation technology, photocatalysis has been widely used in various fields, while the practical application of photocatalysis is limited to the rapid separation of electrons and holes. Recently, it has been found that the piezoelectric effect can be used to accelerate the separation of carriers by generating an internal electric field and then improve the photocatalytic performance. Furthermore, many strategies implemented on piezo-photocatalytic materials have emerged for further improving the photocatalytic activity, stability, and repeated applicability. This work summarizes the mainstream piezoelectric and piezoelectric photocatalytic material systems and the influence mechanism of their piezoelectric properties and piezoelectric photocatalysis. Also, combined with the pyroelectric effect, the possibility and theoretical mechanism of synergistic enhancement of the photocatalysis between pyroelectric materials and photocatalysis and piezoelectric photocatalysis systems were investigated. Besides, the applications of various piezo-photocatalytic materials for in various fields are reviewed. Because of current challenges and future developments, the possibility of an in-depth dissection of piezo-photocatalytic systems to further enhance their practical applications is prospected in this review.