Recently, Prof. Shun Li et al. reported a novel heterostructured piezo-photocatalyst by decorating plasmonic Au nanoparticles (AuNPs) on piezoelectric AgNbO3 nanocubes. The optimized Au/AgNbO3 nanocomposites exhibit significantly enhanced photocatalytic activities toward hydrogen evolution reaction from water and degradation of organic pollutants assisted by ultrasonic mechanical vibration. The considerably promoted photocatalytic activity can be attributed to a synergetic coupling of surface plasmon resonance and piezotronic effect, by which energetic hot electrons generated on the plasmonic AuNPs can be effective extracted onto AgNbO3 driven by mechanical vibration induced piezo-potential near the heterojunction. This work undoubtedly demonstrates that the integration of SPR and piezotronic effects holds great promise to improve the photocatalytic efficiencies.

Please refer to: Nano Energy, 2022, 95, 107031, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nanoen.2022.107031