Fabrication of Novel Cyanuric Acid Modified g-C3N4/Kaolinite Composite with Enhanced Visible Light-Driven Photocatalytic Activity

Abstract

A novel kind of cyanuric-acid-modified graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4)/kaolinite (m-CN/KA) composite with enhanced visible light-driven photocatalytic performance was fabricated through a facile two-step process. Rhodamine B (RhB) was taken as the target pollutant to study the photocatalytic performance of the synthesized catalysts. It is indicated that the cyanuric acid modification significantly enhanced photocatalytic activity under visible light illumination in comparison with the other reference samples. The apparent rate constant of m-CN/KA is almost 1.9 times and 4.0 times those of g-C3N4/kaolinite and bare g-C3N4, respectively. The superior photocatalytic performance of m-CN/KA could be ascribed, not only to the generation of abundant pore structure and reactive sites, but also to the efficient separation of the photogenerated electron-hole pairs. Furthermore, the possible photocatalytic degradation mechanism of m-CN/KA was also presented in this paper. It could be anticipated that this novel and efficient, metal-free, mineral-based photocatalytic composite has great application prospects in organic pollutant degradation.

Selective oxidation of aromatic alcohols in the presence of C3N4 photocatalysts derived from the polycondensation of melamine, cyanuric and barbituric acids

“…It is reported that the addition of cyanuric acid along with melamine during the preparation of the photocatalyst could effectively improve the adsorption ability of the composites. This can be attributed, also in accordance with the literature, to the presence of a high porosity and to a large number of reactive sites which increase the specific surface area of the solid compared with g-C 3 N 4 , thus improving both the adsorption capacity and the photocatalytic performance [55]. The adsorption ability in the dark of the Cy-and B-modified C 3 N 4 materials prepared in this research did not enhance with respect to the g-C 3 N 4 powder, at least in our experimental conditions.…”

Influence of C3N4 Precursors on Photoelectrochemical Behavior of TiO2/C3N4 Photoanode for Solar Water Oxidation

“…Therefore, 2D nanosheets of C 3 N 4 in TiO 2 /C 3 N 4 -CM and TiO 2 /C 3 N 4 -CMT outperform the particle-like C 3 N 4 of TiO 2 /C 3 N 4 -T. This study emphasizes the fact that the thiourea modified C 3 N 4 shows enhanced performance than that of the C 3 N 4 synthesized from only thiourea or melamine. Cyanuric acid is known to form supramolecular complexes with melamine which yields sheet-like 2D structure [23,35]. This offers the ability to synthesize the 2D sheet-like C 3 N 4 simply by forming the supramolecular complexes and altering the precursors.…”

Optimal Synthesis of Environment-Friendly Iron Red Pigment from Natural Nanostructured Clay Minerals

“…The crystalline structure of natural clay minerals and the corresponding hybrid pigments (Clay-IORs) were studied by XRD analyses (see Figure 1 ). The main crystal phase information of natural clay minerals, including IS [ 25 ], REC [ 26 ], KAO [ 27 ], MMT [ 28 ], VMT [ 29 , 30 ], SEP [ 9 ], HYS [ 31 ] and ILL was listed in Table S1 (see Supplementary Materials ). As can be seen from Figure 1 and Table S1 , the associated minerals, such as quartz (at 2 θ = 20.86°, 26.67°, 36.55°, 42.45°, 50.12°, 59.94° and 68.15°) [ 32 ], muscovite (at 2 θ = 8.81°, 17.78°, and 27.96°) [ 33 ], talc (at 2 θ = 9.49°, 18.66° and 28.65°) [ 30 ], biotite (at 2 θ = 10.56°) [ 29 ], dolomite (at 2 θ = 30.94°, 33.54°, 41.13°, 44.95°, and 50.53°), and calcite (at 2 θ = 23.05°, 29.39°, 35.98°, 39.42°, 47.50°, 48.50°, 56.58°, 57.42°and 60.99°) are present in the natural clay minerals.…”