(Digital Presentation) Enhancement on Degradation of Organic Dye through Piezophototronic Activities by High Entropy Oxide-(CaZrYCeCr)O2 / Bi4Ti3O12 Nanocomposite

Abstract

High entropy material demonstrates several effects from multi-component composition, which is potential in the catalytical field. During this decade, combining the mechanical force-driven piezoelectric/ferroelectric catalysts with photocatalysts has attracted much attention due to the separation of photogenerated carriers, leading to synergistic catalytic activities. This study reports a novel composite of high entropy oxide (CaZrYCeCr)O2 with unique ferroelectric properties mixing with bismuth titanate (Bi4Ti3O12) microplates, improving the piezo-phototronic catalytic activities. The results show that high entropy oxide catalyst (CaZrYCeCr)O2 mainly consists of the porous structure with multivalent transition metal substitution, contributing to severe lattice distortion. Consequently, the precipitation of disordered phase Ca(Zr1-xCrx)O3(x=0.05~0.1) caused by lattice distortion was decorated on the porous framework. In addition, Ca(Zr1-xCrx)O3 with a non-centrosymmetric structure exhibits ferroelectric property and plays a vital role in separating the electron-hole pairs, which performs higher degradation efficiency around 588 % compared to pristine ZrYCeO2. Additionally, the ferroelectric Bi4Ti3O12 was considered to construct a Z-scheme catalytic activity and form a heterojunction high entropy oxide. Furthermore, we demonstrated that morphotropic phase boundaries between Bi4Ti3O12 and CaZr1-xCrxO3 could dramatically enhance the ferroelectric property and promote the performance of the piezo-phototronic activities, revealing that CaZrYCeCrO2/ Bi4Ti3O12 could be an innovative catalyst in the future.