Utilization of Photocatalysis and Pyroelectric Catalysis to Enhance Catalytic Properties in Pb(Zr0.52Ti0.48) O3 Nanocubes: A Study on Pyro-/photo-bi-catalysis Degradation of Dye Wastewater

Abstract

Photo-generated carriers efficient separation and transportation are pivotal in determining the efficiency of photocatalysis technology. In this work, we utilize pyroelectric-assisted photocatalysis to promote the effective separation of carriers of Pb(Zr0.52Ti0.48)O3 (PZT) nanocubes, and the degradation of dyes is realized under thermal gradient excitation and visible light irradiation. Under the conditions of 20–55 °C hot-cold cycles and visible light, using the same PZT catalysts, the degradation rate of the pyro-/photo-bi-catalysis is up to 95.09 %, much higher than 66.21 % or 11.41 % which are achieved by the conditions only photocatalytic or pyroelectric catalysis. It is found that the improvement in bi-catalysis efficiency is not only because of the pyro-generated and photogenerated carriers generation, but also on account of pyroelectric polarization promotes separation of photo-induced carriers. These results indicate that pyroelectric PZT can degrade dye wastewater by using multiple clean energy sources such as solar energy and thermal energy simultaneously. The multiple fields superposition catalysis of PZT nanocubes is potential in the future application of dye wastewater treatment.