Flexoelectricity has trigged emergent phenomena and functionalities, such as flexo-resistance, flexo-photovoltaic, photo-flexoelectric, flexo-electronics and so on. Analogous to piezocatalysis, the flexoelectric effect can provide a novel mechanism to enhance the sonochemical redox reactions. Here, by extending flexoelectricity to electrochemical functionality, an unprecedented phenomenon is demonstrated of flexo-catalysis effect in centrosymmetric nanoparticles to degrade organic dyes. Simulations have been performed to elucidate the bubble cavitation induced strain gradients and polarization variation, and in turn the flexoelectricity induced reactive species have been verified by trapping experiment. The flexo-catalytic results show that more than 92.2% of Rhodamine B can be degraded at a rate of ≈k = 0.6 h⁻¹. This finding not only suggests a new strategy to generate the flexoelectric effect, but also opens up the possibility to extend existing catalytic techniques.

中文翻译：

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中心对称纳米粒子中的强大柔印催化

柔性电引发了涌现的现象和功能，如柔性电阻、柔性光伏、光电柔性、柔性电子等。类似于压电催化，挠曲电效应可以提供一种新的机制来增强声化学氧化还原反应。在这里，通过将挠曲电扩展到电化学功能，证明了中心对称纳米粒子中的挠曲催化效应降解有机染料的前所未有的现象。已经进行了模拟以阐明气泡空化引起的应变梯度和极化变化，进而通过捕获实验验证了挠曲电引起的反应物种。柔印催化结果表明，超过 92.2% 的罗丹明 B 可以以 ≈ k  = 0.6 h的速率降解^-1。这一发现不仅提出了一种产生挠曲电效应的新策略，而且还开辟了扩展现有催化技术的可能性。