Piezocatalytic foam for highly efficient degradation of aqueous organics

Abstract

Piezoelectric catalysis (piezocatalysis) is a physical/chemical process that utilizes piezoelectric potential for accelerating chemical reactions, in which ubiquitous mechanical energies in nature are used for various catalysis applications, e.g., treating organic water pollutants. Despite the high efficiency achieved by piezocatalytic powders, the particles used tend to diffuse in water systems and are hard to be separated, thus causing secondary pollution. Herein, a free-standing piezocatalytic foam is designed and fabricated, which is composed of BaTiO3 nanoparticles embedded in the PVDF scaffold. The as-prepared PVDF–BaTiO3 composite foam demonstrates outstanding piezocatalytic efficiency in removing aqueous organics among state-of-the-art integral piezocatalytic platforms, which lie in the synergy of piezoelectric materials and abundant interconnected pores within the foam. Significantly, PVDF–BaTiO3 foam is further applied for purifying natural water samples, by which the permanganate index of the water sample reduces by nearly 30% after 2 h of treatment. In addition, as a monolithic platform, PVDF–BaTiO3 foam is easy to be collected, with high reuse stability and applicability for treating various pollutants, resulting in dominant advantages over powder-based systems for practical high-flux wastewater treatment. Herein, a piezocatalytic platform is provided for the effective degradation of organic pollutants in water, with minimal environmental side effects.