Facile Large-Scale Synthesis of Urea-Derived Porous Graphitic Carbon Nitride with Extraordinary Visible-Light Spectrum Photodegradation

Abstract

We report the large-scale synthesis of porous graphitic carbon nitride (g-C 3 N 4 ) in a direct heat treatment process by controlling the thermal condensation temperature of the low-cost urea precursor. An excellent linear relation between the yield of the urea-derived porous g-C 3 N 4 (U-g-C 3 N 4 ) and the input urea was experimentally demonstrated, and consequently, a large-scale yield >50 g in a batch was readily achieved. A series of morphology and structure characterizations revealed the actual evolutionary process of the temperature-dependent porous architecture of U-g-C 3 N 4 and its inherent superiority. Furthermore, we demonstrated the extraordinary visible-light-driven photodegradation activity of large-scale U-g-C 3 N 4 toward organic pollutants such as rhodamine B, safranine T, and α-naphthol. Such superior photodegradation performance and long-term photocatalytic stability, together with a scalable preparation method, may render as-fabricated U-g-C 3 N 4 as a promising candidate for practical application in environmental remediation.

Urea-derived graphitic carbon nitride (u-g-C3N4) films with highly enhanced antimicrobial and sporicidal activity

“…The presence of in-plane pores has been previously reported to be characteristic of samples of g -C 3 N 4 produced from oxygenated precursors, including urea or thiourea, or samples of g -C 3 N 4 that were synthesized in the presence of water. [29, 50] No evidence of lattice fringes were observed at the boundaries of samples of u- g -C 3 N 4 , indicating that the samples of this material were amorphous. [51] The effective particle size and surface area of u- g -C 3 N 4 was investigated by hydrodynamic radius and BET measurements.…”

Room-temperature synthesis of nanoporous 1D microrods of graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) with highly enhanced photocatalytic activity and stability

“…A photocatalysis mechanism was developed based on these findings. Overall charge generation and transport processes are given in Equations (2)–(5)61626364:…”

Efficient Photoelectrochemical Performance of γ Irradiated g-C3N4 and Its g-C3N4@BiVO4 Heterojunction for Solar Water Splitting

“…In this work, urea was chosen as a 7 potential precursor due to its availability and low material synthesis cost. Urea was reported as an excellent precursor for the synthesis of sheet-like g-C N 4 with high specific surface area and high porosity [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] . However, under visible light radiation, the g-C 3 N 4 exhibit weak photocatalytic activity due to its moderate bandgap (2.7 eV) 24 .…”