Ba2+-doping introduced piezoelectricity and efficient Ultrasound-Triggered bactericidal activity of brookite TiO2 nanorods
Yijun Han, Haoran Zhang, Ruihao Yang, Xinyue Yu, Zeinab Marfavi, Quanjie Lv, Gengxin Zhang, Kang Sun, Congli Yuan, Ke Tao
Abstract
Exploring highly efficient ultrasound-triggered catalysts is pivotal for various areas. Herein, we presented that Ba 2+ doped brookite TiO 2 nanorod (TiO 2 : Ba) with polarization-induced charge separation is a candidate. The replacement of Ba 2+ for Ti 4+ not only induced significant lattice distortion to induce polarization but also created oxygen vacancy defects for facilitating the charge separation, leading to high-efficiency reactive oxygen species (ROS) evolution in the piezo-catalytic processes. Furthermore, the piezocatalytic ability to degrade dye wastewater demonstrates a rate constant of 0.172 min -1 and achieves a 100 % antibacterial rate at a low dose for eliminating E. coli. This study advances that doping can induce piezoelectricity and reveals that lattice distortion-induced polarization and vacancy defects engineering can improve ROS production, which might impact applications such as water disinfection and sonodynamic therapy.