Insight into the piezo-photo coupling effect of PbTiO3/CdS composites for piezo-photocatalytic hydrogen production

By Xueyan Huang, Rui Lei, Jie Yuan, Fan Gao, Cankun Jiang, Wenhui Feng, Jiandong Zhuang, Ping Liu. 2021

288 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract The polarization field with the function in carrier separation has aroused substantial interest. For heterojunction complexes, however, the static polarization field will be inevitably shielded by a large number of carriers. Herein, a novel hybrid consisted of single-domain PbTiO3 coated by CdS particles was selected as a model material to prove that the alternating piezoelectric field induced by periodic stress can destroy shielding effect. After the introduction of alternating piezoelectric potential by using ultrasonication, PbTiO3/CdS-10 % exhibited a much higher H2 production rate by piezo-photocatalysis (849.0 μmol h−1 g−1) than by individual piezocatalysis (400.6 μmol h−1 g−1) or photocatalysis (98.9 μmol h−1 g−1). Furthermore, the finite element simulation shows that PbTiO3/CdS heterostructure has a superior piezoelectric potential difference compare to pure PbTiO3 or pure CdS. Based on data analysis, the mechanism about the piezo-photo coupling effect was proposed, which will provide a reference for the design and development of high-efficiency piezo-photocatalyst.

Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/44cd4ec1865f5db37d9d0989909654ce3a9183fd