Ferroelectric BaTiO3/Pr2O3 heterojunction harvesting room-temperature cold–hot alternation energy for efficiently pyrocatalytic dye decomposition

Abstract

The strong pyrocatalytic dye decomposition of the BaTiO3/Pr2O3 heterojunction catalyst under cold–hot alternation conditions has been demonstrated in this work. For pure BaTiO3 nanofibers, ~54% rhodamine B (RhB) dye is decomposed under the cold–hot alternation of 29–57 ℃. With the loading content of Pr2O3 increases from 0 to 4 wt%, the pyrocatalytic decomposition ratio of RhB solution increases first and then decreases, eventually achieving a maximum of 91% at 3 wt%. The enhanced pyrocatalytic performance after loading Pr2O3 can be attributed to an internal electric field of the heterojunction, which effectively separates positive and negative charges. The strongly pyrocatalytic performance of BaTiO3/Pr2O3 makes it hopeful for applications in the dye wastewater treatment through harvesting the environmental cold–hot temperature alternation thermal energy in future.

Keywords

• pyroelectric materials
• batio3
• pyrocatalysis
• batio3/pr2o3 heterojunction
• dye decomposition