Harnessing Mechanical Energy for Catalysis: Mechanisms, Materials, and Applications of the Emerging Piezocatalysis Frontier.

Driven by the urgent global water remediation demands, piezocatalysis, as an emerging green tech, has quickly become a massive research hotspot. Piezocatalysis breaks free from the high energy costs and strict operating conditions that often hold back traditional catalysts by directly converting mechanical energy into usable chemical energy. This review systematically tracks the design progress of piezocatalytic materials. This work provides an in-depth analysis of the dynamic mechanisms revealing how mechanical stress induces endogenous polarization fields to precisely regulate charge separation and reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation. We heavily focus on what is happening at the nanoscale-morphology tweaks, interface engineering, and polarization enhancement by tracing the evolutionary path of these materials. This article shed light on how active sites dynamically adapt under stress by pairing density functional theory calculations with in situ characterization. Finally, we map out the road ahead, tackling the macrolevel engineering challenges of mitigating nanomaterial fatigue, improving anticorrosion performance in complex waters, and designing viable continuous-flow reactors.