Accelerated pyro-catalytic hydrogen production enabled by plasmonic local heating of Au on pyroelectric BaTiO nanoparticles.

The greatest challenge that limits the application of pyro-catalytic materials is the lack of highly frequent thermal cycling due to the enormous heat capacity of ambient environment, resulting in low pyro-catalytic efficiency. Here, we introduce localized plasmonic heat sources to rapidly yet efficiently heat up pyro-catalytic material itself without wasting energy to raise the surrounding temperature, triggering a significantly expedited pyro-catalytic reaction and enabling multiple pyro-catalytic cycling per unit time. In our work, plasmonic metal/pyro-catalyst composite is fabricated by in situ grown gold nanoparticles on three-dimensional structured coral-like BaTiO nanoparticles, which achieves a high hydrogen production rate of 133.

Harvesting the Vibration Energy of BiFeO Nanosheets for Hydrogen Evolution.

In this study, mechanical vibration is used for hydrogen generation and decomposition of dye molecules, with the help of BiFeO (BFO) square nanosheets. A high hydrogen production rate of ≈124.1 μmol g is achieved under mechanical vibration (100 W) for 1 h at the resonant frequency of the BFO nanosheets.

Room-temperature pyro-catalytic hydrogen generation of 2D few-layer black phosphorene under cold-hot alternation.

Many 2D few-layer materials show piezoelectric or pyroelectric effects due to the loss-of-inversion symmetry induced by broken structure, although they are not piezoelectric or pyroelectric in the bulk. In this work, we find that the puckered graphene-like 2D few-layer black phosphorene is pyroelectric and shows a pyro-catalytic effect, where the pyroelectric charges generated under ambient cold-hot alternation are utilized for hydrogen evolution and dye molecule decomposition. Under thermal cycling between 15 °C and 65 °C, the 2D few-layer black phosphorene shows a direct hydrogen generation of about 540 μmol per gram of catalyst after 24 thermal cycles and about 99% decomposition of Rhodamine B dye after 5 thermal cycles.

Highly efficient pyrocatalysis of pyroelectric NaNbO shape-controllable nanoparticles for room-temperature dye decomposition.

In this work, pyrocatalytic effect is realized in hydrothermally-synthesized pyroelectric NaNbO shape-controllable nanoparticles via the product of pyroelectric effect and electrochemical redox. A pyro-catalysis is designed to decompose dye wastewater. Under the 23-50 °C heating-cooling cycle, the maximum pyrocatalytic decomposition ratio of NaNbO nanorods, nanosheets and nanocubes are 96%, 76% and 33%, respectively.

High-efficiency and mechano-/photo- bi-catalysis of piezoelectric-ZnO@ photoelectric-TiO core-shell nanofibers for dye decomposition.

A mechano-/photo- bi-catalyst of piezoelectric-ZnO@photoelectric-TiO core-shell nanofibers was hydrothermally synthesized for Methyl Orange (10 mg L) decomposition. The mechano-/photo- bi-catalysis in ZnO@TiO is superior to mechano- or photo-catalysis in decomposing Methyl Orange, which is mainly attributed to the synergy effect of the piezoelectric-ZnO core's mechano-catalysis and the thin photoelectric TiO shell's photo-catalysis. The heterostructure of the piezoelectric-ZnO@photoelectric-TiO core-shell interface, being helpful to reduce electron-hole pair recombination and to separate the piezoelectrically-/photoelectric ally- induced electrons and holes, may also make a great contribution to the enhanced catalysis performance.

Strong pyro-catalysis of pyroelectric BiFeO3 nanoparticles under a room-temperature cold-hot alternation.

A strong pyro-catalytic dye degradation with an ultrahigh degradation efficiency (>99%) in hydrothermally synthesized pyroelectric BiFeO3 nanoparticles was achieved under a room-temperature cold-hot alternating excitation (between 27 °C to 38 °C). The pyro-catalysis originated from a combination of the pyroelectric effect and the electrochemical oxidation-reduction reaction. The intermediate products (hydroxyl radicals and superoxide radicals) of pyro-electro-catalysis were observed.