Molecular scale influence mechanism of reaction raw materials on catalyst particle size and its piezoelectric catalytic performance

Abstract

The particle size of piezoelectric catalyst plays an important role in the improvement of piezoelectric catalyst performance. However, the inherent influence mechanism of the synthetic raw materials on piezoelectric catalyst particle size is still unclear. Herein, a super simple direct precipitation method was used to prepare ZnO nanomaterials with different particle size, and explore the internal influencing mechanism between raw material molecules and photocatalyst particle size at molecular level. The results indicated that the particle size of the obtained ZnO gradually increased with the changes of Zn(NO3)2, ZnCl2 and ZnSO4. After investigating the reason, it was surprised to find that the shift of catalyst particle size is related to the hydrating ion radius of the reaction raw material: with the increase of the hydrating ion radius of the reaction raw material, the catalyst particle size will gradually increase. Correspondingly, the piezoelectric properties of the catalyst with the smallest hydrating ion radius is the best. After 25 min of ultrasound, the piezoelectric catalytic degradation efficiency is up to 91 %. In addition, the obtained catalyst exhibits good recycling ability. This work explores the internal influencing mechanism among raw material molecules, photocatalyst particle size and catalytic properties from the molecular level, which can provide a selection basis for the selection of raw materials when synthesizing small-sized and high-performance piezoelectric catalysts.