Donghai Huang, Tengfei Wu, Daoyue Xie, Huinan Che, Yanhui Ao
Accepted: 2025-07-03
Piezocatalysis that brings the conversion from mechanical
energy to chemical energy has caught more and more attention of researchers in
the field of wastewater treatment, due to its advantages of environmental
friendliness and sustainability. In particular, Zinc oxide (ZnO) is regarded as an appropriate candidate material for the piezocatalytic degradation of aquatic pollutants because of
the merits such as low-cost, non-toxicity and remarkable electron mobility. Besides, wurtzite ZnO possesses unique piezoelectricity owing to its noncentrosymmetric structure, which is constituted by alternating planes of Zn2+ and O2- ions along the c-axis, each Zn2+ being tetrahedral with four surrounding O2-,
and vice versa. Nevertheless, the piezocatalytic performance of pure ZnO is unsatisfactory
which greatly hinders its practical application. So numerous strategies are used to enhance its piezocatalytic activity. This review roundly sums up the strategies for the enhancement of
ZnO-based piezocatalysis performance. Furthermore, current challenges and future perspectives of ZnO-based piezocatalysis are proposed, which would be conducive to the design and development
of more serviceable ZnO-based piezocatalysts in the future.