Enhancing the catalytic activity of BiVO4: A new insight on the design of high-efficiency piezo-photocatalyst

Photocatalysis is an ideal method for the removal of tetracycline hydrochloride (THC) in water, but it remains challenging, mainly due to the rapid recombination of electron-hole pairs in the catalyst. In this paper, BiVO 4 is prepared by in-situ piezoelectric assisted method (BVO-U) for the first time and applied to the piezo-photocatalytic degradation of THC. It is found that the two catalysts (BVO prepared by stirring assisted method and BVO-U) have similar structures and chemical states, but they exhibit different piezoelectric properties . It is worth mentioning that the degradation efficiency of BVO-U (90 %) is higher than that of BVO (83 %) under ultrasonic coupled light irradiation . In addition, the mechanism is revealed through density functional theory (DFT) calculations, which suggests that the dipole moment of BVO-U increased, promoting the separation of photo-generated carriers, thereby improving the catalytic activity . These findings highlight the great potential of in-situ piezoelectric-assisted synthesis of BVO in piezo-photocatalytic degradation and provide an idea for designing efficient catalysts in the future.