Universal water disinfection by piezoelectret aluminium oxide-based electroporation and generation of reactive oxygen species

Diverse water microbes in water sources pose serious challenges to conventional disinfection techniques, leading to high oxidant and energy cost and large formation of disinfection by-products. Herein, a piezoelectret aluminium oxide (PEAO) was engineered for water disinfection. The piezo-catalytic disinfection system with ultrasonication induced strong electric field intensity of 8.1 × 10⁷ V/m on PEAO surface, resulting in microbial cell membrane in-situ electroporation followed by penetration of generated reactive oxygen species (ROS, hydroxyl radical, singlet oxygen and hydrogen peroxide). The proposed piezo-catalytic disinfection strategy exhibited universal water disinfection performances among different microbes, ~1000-fold more efficient than an equivalent amount of preformed hydrogen peroxide, thus significantly improved the oxidant utilization and disinfection efficiency and potentially decreasing the formation of disinfection by-products. This work clearly demonstrates the application and mechanism of in-situ versatile water disinfection process via piezo-catalytic of PEAO and further applications in other water treatment fields are expected.