Strain-Engineered Nano-Ferroelectrics for High-Efficiency Piezocatalytic Overall Water Splitting

Developing nano-ferroelectric materials with excellent piezoelectric performance for piezocatalysts used in water splitting is highly desired but also challenging, especially with respect to reaching large piezo-potentials that fully align with required redox levels. Herein, heteroepitaxial strain in BaTiO3 nanoparticles with a designed porous structure is successfully induced by engineering their surface reconstruction to dramatically enhance their piezoelectricity. The strain coherence can be maintained throughout the nanoparticle bulk, resulting in a significant increase of the BaTiO3 tetragonality and thus its piezoelectricity. Benefiting from high piezoelectricity, the as-synthesized blue-colored BaTiO3 nanoparticles possess a superb overall water-splitting activity, with H-2 production rates of 159 mu mol g(-1) h(-1), which is almost 130 times higher than that of the pristine BaTiO3 nanoparticles. Thus, this work provides a generic approach for designing highly efficient piezoelectric nanomaterials by strain engineering that can be further extended to various other perovskite oxides, including SrTiO3, thereby enhancing their potential for piezoelectric catalysis.

Automated summary

The study successfully enhanced the piezoelectricity of BaTiO3 nanoparticles by inducing heteroepitaxial strain through surface reconstruction, leading to significantly improved water-splitting activity. This approach offers a generic method for designing highly efficient piezoelectric nanomaterials and has potential applications in other perovskite oxides.