Piezoelectric and Magnetoelectric materials for environmental application

Environmental pollution and shortage of clean energy are among the most demanding problems that threaten the sustainable development of human civilization. Water pollution caused by the discharge of toxic, synthetic chemical compounds into effluents is one of the major sources of environmental pollution. The presence of even trace amounts of these micro pollutants in water is extremely harmful because of their carcinogenic and mutagenic nature. The high solubility and chemical stability of these micro pollutants allows the majority of them to easily escape conventional water treatment methods and invade the environment. Designing new catalysts which efficiently utilize multiple energy sources will contribute to solving the current challenges of environmental remediation and increasing energy demands. In this project, we fabricated piezoelectric and magnetoelectric materials that can successfully harness different energy sources, such as visible light and mechanical vibrations, to degrade micro pollutants into harmless by-products..