Piezo-Electrocatalytic Degradation of Rhodamine B in Water: Experimental and Theoretical Prospects

Piezo-electrocatalysis is an emerging new research area that has the potential to convert redundant mechanical vibrations in industrial systems into useful electrocatalytic processes [1-5]. Due to mechanical stress, charges are polarised within the piezo-electrocatalyst potentially leading to redox reactions on the piezo-electrocatalyst surface (Figure 1a). This conversion of mechanical into chemical energy creates new opportunities to design miniaturised electrochemical devices.

Piezo-electrocatalysis has been mainly investigated as a new green technology for dye wastewater treatment [1-5]. However, its promising potential has not fully been exploited as several factors influencing the piezo-electrocatalytic process are still not clear. In this work, we are preliminarily presenting our experimental approach to explore piezo-electrocatalysis combined with our FEM simulations. This allows to highlight important factors that are critical for the development of this area of research but are generally overlooked by the research community. In our experimental approach, we used an off-the-shelf piezoelectric material (BF-KBT-PT) as piezo-electrocatalyst to degrade Rhodamine B (RhB) in an aqueous solution with the aid of an ultrasonic source (Figure 1b). Based on Sonochemistry, we have developed a FEM-Model to investigate the piezoelectric responses of our BF-KBT-PT piezo-electrocatalysts (Figure 1c) under simulated sonication. This has allowed us to further evaluate their potential as piezo-electrocatalyst from an electrochemical point of view, an important aspect that has so far not been considered. In summary, this communication aims to draw attention to and highlight the importance of electrochemistry in piezo-electrocatalysis.

Fig. 1 (a)Example of redox mechanisms in piezo-electrocatalysis (b) Piezo-electrocatalytic degradation of aqueous RhB (c) Piezoelectric response of BF-KBT-PT-piezo-electrocatalyst under simulated sonication.

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