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Rhenium disulfide (ReS2) is a promising piezoelectric catalyst due to its excellent electron transfer ability and abundant unsaturated sites. The 1T′ phase structure leads to the evolution of ReS2into a centrosymmetric spatial structure, which restricts its application in piezoelectric catalysis. Herein, we propose a controllable defect engineering strategy to trigger the piezoelectric response of ReS2. The introduction of vacancy defects disrupts the initial centrosymmetric structure, which breaks the piezoelectric polarization bond and generates piezoelectric properties. By using transmission electron microscopy, we characterized it at the atomic scale and determined that vacancy defects contribute to an excellent piezoelectric property through first-principles calculations. Notably, the piezoelectric coefficient of the catalyst with 40 s-etching (ReS2@C-40) is 23.07 pm/V, an order of magnitude greater than other transition metal dichalcogenides. It demonstrated the feasibility of optimizing piezoelectric properties by increasing the conformational asymmetry. Based on its remarkable piezoelectric activity, ReS2@C-40 exhibits highly efficient piezo-photocatalytic synergistic sterilization performance with 99.99% eradication of Escherichia coliand 96.67% of Staphylococcus aureuswithin 30 min. This pioneering research on the coupling effect of ReS2in piezoelectric catalysis and photocatalysis provides ideas for the development of piezo-photocatalysts and efficient water purification technologies.

Piezoelectricity in 2D transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) has gathered significant interest due to their massive exposure of unsaturated edge sites and high piezoelectric modulus. Nevertheless, the piezoelectricity in 1T' phase TMDs is inhibited by its center symmetry of space group. Herein, to break the shackles of piezoelectric polarization, we synthesize a piezoelectric material composed of an atomic molybdenum array bound to distorted 1T' ReS2(MDR). The phase transition from 1T' to distorted 1T' (D-1T') removes the special Peierl's distortion of ReS2, breaking its center symmetry and allowing for piezoelectric generation. Remarkably, MDR exhibits a large piezoelectric coefficient (d33) value of 15.45pm/V, which is an order of magnitude higher than those reported in other TMDs. Combining with excellent piezocatalytic activity, a 0D/3D di-piezoelectric porous electret featuring an enhanced quantum confinement piezoelectric effect based on the MDR quantum dots (QDs) and inverse opal g-C3N4(IOCN) is demonstrated for high-efficiency piezoelectric catalysis.