Morphology regulation is an effective strategy to enhance the specific surface area ( S BET ), which can boost catalytic performance by exposing more active sites and providing sufficient charge-reactant interaction sites. Numerous studies have confirmed that tailoring the sheet-like structures of catalysts to expose more active sites improves catalytic performance. However, for piezocatalytic reactions, the polarization capability of materials is closely linked to their catalytic processes. To date, morphology regulation has rarely been exploited to synergistically increase reaction sites and enhance interfacial polarization for superior piezocatalytic performance. Thus, it has become a critical scientific issue in piezocatalysis to explore whether morphology regulation can expose more reactive sites while simultaneously enhancing the piezoelectric performance of materials.
Recently, a team of green energy and catalytic materials scientists led by Professor Da Chen and Professor Laishun Qin joint team from China Jiliang University, highlightly reported the subject of thickness-regulated interfacial polarization in CTAB-tailored Bi 2 WO 6 for enhanced piezocatalysis. In this work, by leveraging the dual advantages of morphology regulation, using CTAB as a modifier, we synthesized two-dimensional ultrathin Bi 2 WO 6 nanosheets with an approximate atomic-scale thickness (2.26 nm) through inhibiting layer stacking via selective adsorption. This not only doubled the specific surface area to 29.15 m 2 g ‒1 but also significantly enhanced the interfacial polarization intensity to 18.34 mV, and raised the effective piezoelectric coefficient to 27.53 pm V ‒1 , yielding a maximum per-unit-power hydrogen production rate of 61.20 μmol g ‒1 h ‒1 W ‒1 . This strategy provides a new paradigm for the design of high-efficiency piezocatalysts and has great application potential in new energy fields such as hydrogen production.
The team published their work in Journal of Advanced Ceramics on February 4, 202 6 .
“In this work, we utilized the dual advantages of morphology regulation in piezocatalysis to synthesize two-dimensional ultrathin BWO nanosheets using hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB). This enabled us to achieve dual regulation of active sites and piezoelectric properties, maximizing the hydrogen production rate per unit power in piezoelectric catalysis. This is one of the highest values reported to date, providing a new paradigm for high-performance piezoelectric catalysts.” said Da Chen, professor from College of Materials and Chemistry at China Jiliang University.
This work is financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (22309170, 22179108), the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province (LQ24E020003, LQN25E020017, LD25B060001), Open fund project of National-Local Joint Engineering Research Center of Heavy Metals Pollutants Control and Resource Utilization of Nanchang Hangkong University (ES202480182), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Provincial Universities of Zhejiang (2024YW14，2025QN065). The authors extend their gratitude to Shiyanjia Lab (www.shiyanjia.com) for providing invaluable assistance with the material characterization analysis.
About Journal of Advanced Ceramics
Journal of Advanced Ceramics (JAC) is an international academic journal that presents the state-of-the-art results of theoretical and experimental studies on the processing, structure, and properties of advanced ceramics and ceramic-based composites. JAC is Fully Open Access, monthly published by Tsinghua University Press, and exclusively available via SciOpen . JAC’s 2024 IF is 16.6, ranking in Top 1 (1/33, Q1) among all journals in “Materials Science, Ceramics” category, and its 2024 CiteScore is 25.9 (5/130) in Scopus database. ResearchGate homepage: https://www.researchgate.net/journal/Journal-of-Advanced-Ceramics-2227-8508
Journal of Advanced Ceramics
Thickness-regulated interfacial polarization in CTAB-tailored Bi2WO6for enhanced piezocatalysis
26-Jan-2026