Tailoring soft-flexible negative Poisson's ratio support to boost photocatalytic efficiency: From dissociation to anchoring

Highly efficient catalysts have been developed and obtained excellent performance in the laboratory environment. However, there is a huge gap between the laboratory and industry. The high request of recyclability and stability determine that the traditional powder catalyst cannot be directly applied. On the other hand, catalyst anchoring is a promising strategy to solve this problem. Here, novel flexible supports with different negative Poisson's ratios (NPR) were fabricated to obtain enhanced photocatalytic and mechanical property by 3D printing, and were furtherly modified by Ag nanowires, TiO₂ and metallization. The largest specific surface area is up to 2.66 m² g⁻¹ which is because of the relatively smooth surface of the support. The NPR support modified by TiO₂ completely degraded the dye solution within 75 min, resulting from the improved site for CdS to load. Part of the TiO₂ formed heterojunction with CdS, but the content was too small to significantly enhance the transfer of electron-hole pairs. After ten cycles, the residual catalytic performance remained 71.25%− 75.32%, which is mainly from the weak binding of CdS. The mechanical properties were significantly improved by adding TiO₂ by almost 4 times than that of pure Polyurethaneacrylate (PUA), resulting from the pinning effect from the nano particles. The proposed strategy offers new perspectivity of coupling delicately efficient photocatalyst and flexible support for the large-scale industrial application.