Synergetic effect of piezoelectricity and heterojunction on photocatalytic performance

[Display omitted] •The effect of piezoelectricity on the multicomponent photocatalysts is first investigated.•The organic piezoelectric material, PVDF, was used to compound with photocatalysts for utilizing the water flow.•In the presence of PVDF, the activity of MoS2/g-C3N4 heterojunction can be increased by 66.8 %. The less-than-ideal photogenerated electron-hole behaviors is one of the significant reasons for the low photocatalytic efficiency. In this work, organic piezoelectric material, PVDF, was used to restrain the recombination of photogenerated electron-hole of MoS2/g-C3N4 heterojunction photocatalyst, which aimed to enhance the photocatalytic performance. After being compounded with the PVDF, the photocatalytic activity of MoS2/g-C3N4 heterojunction can be increased by 66.8 %, which showed that the MoS2/g-C3N4 heterojunction had an excellent enhancement effect on the photocatalytic efficiency of the composite film. Compared with the pristine g-C3N4 photocatalyst piezoelectric film, the piezoelectric effect of heterojunction piezoelectric films varies with the different amounts of MoS2. Among these different piezoelectric films, the 10-M-CN-P film possess highest photocatalytic performance, possibly due to the best synergistical effect of piezoelectricity and heterojunction.