Confinement Aided Simultanous Water Cleaning and Energy Harvesting Using Atomically Thin Wurtzite (Wurtzene)

Kumbhakar, P and Mukherjee, M and Pramanik, A and Karmakar, S and Singh, AK and Tiwary, CS and Kumbhakar, P (2021) Confinement Aided Simultanous Water Cleaning and Energy Harvesting Using Atomically Thin Wurtzite (Wurtzene). In: Advanced Sustainable Systems, 5 (2).

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Abstract

Syntheses of few-layered piezocatalysts from nonlayered materials have gained a huge attention of attention in recent years due to their potential applicability in efficient removal of toxic elements from water. Here, a simple scalable bottom up approach consisting of wet-chemical synthesis method is used to produce the atomically thin (2D)-wurtzite ZnO: “wurtzene.” The presence of a large number of well-distributed surface defects in the synthesized wurtzene promotes the separation of charge carriers in it via the excellent piezo-photocatalytic activity and thereby the efficiency of degradation of a test dye (namely methylene blue) is enhanced by ≈5 times. By taking an innovative approach, a piezoelectric driven power cell is also fabricated by using the wurtzene and the highest open circuit voltage is found out to be ≈40 V at 1.0 kPa of applied periodic pressure. The experimental observations are explained with density functional theory calculation. The confinement effect due to reduced dimension plays a crucial role in the wurtzene's excellent piezoelectric response. It is envisioned that the present findings will provided a clear insight into the synthesis of wurtzene with surface defects for highly efficient sunlight driven photocatalytic activity as well as piezoelectric energy harvesting.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	Advanced Sustainable Systems
Publisher:	Wiley-VCH Verlag
Additional Information:	The copyright for this article belongs to Wiley-VCH Verlag.
Keywords:	Carrier mobility; Decontamination; Density functional theory; II-VI semiconductors; Open circuit voltage; Oxide minerals; Photocatalytic activity; Piezoelectricity; Surface defects; Toxic materials; Zinc oxide; Zinc sulfide, Bottom up approach; Confinement effects; Innovative approaches; Piezoelectric energy harvesting; Piezoelectric response; Piezoelectric-driven; Water cleaning; Wet chemical synthesis, Energy harvesting
Department/Centre:	Division of Chemical Sciences > Materials Research Centre
Date Deposited:	16 Feb 2023 10:26
Last Modified:	16 Feb 2023 10:26
URI:	https://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/80527

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