Facile and enlargeable preparation of piezocatalytic CaCO 3 for efficient degradation of organic dyes

• Published in: Environmental research 2024-12, Vol.267, p.120649
• Main Authors: Zhao, Yunong, Zhou, Lin, Xiang, Dongliang, Guo, Zhanghong, Wang, Chan, Song, Qijun
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1096-0953
• DOI: 10.1016/j.envres.2024.120649

Piezoelectric catalysis has emerged as a promising green technology for implementing pollutant degradation and H O production. The use of environment friendly and abundantly available piezocatalysts is critical for practical applications. This work presents the preparation of various morphological CaCO via a simple precipitation method in the absence or presence of different templates. The piezoelectric force microscopy (PFM) characterization demonstrates that the porous CaCO has excellent piezoelectric activity, which also demonstrates its efficient production of H O and degradation of organic dyes. A production rate of H O of 331 μmol g ·h and a degradation rate of 0.22535 min for 5 mg/L Rhodamine B (RhB) were achieved under conventional ultrasonic agitation. The mechanistic investigations along with the H O control experiment revealed that the piezocatalytic production of H O mainly follows the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) pathway. Furthermore, this research work has successfully achieved the large-scale preparation of CaCO , and the properties of the prepared CaCO remain stable during the expansion of the preparation scale. Considering the simple, cost-effective and readily-scale-up preparation, the piezocatalytic CaCO should have a great potential for the degradation of organic dyes.