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

Abstract

A one-dimensional (1D) nanostructure having a porous network is an exceptional photocatalytic material to generate hydrogen (H2) and decontaminate wastewater using solar energy. In this report, we synthesized nanoporous 1D microrods of graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) via a facile and template-free chemical approach at room temperature. The use of concentrated acids induced etching and lift-off because of strong oxidation and protonation. Compared with the bulk g-C3N4, the porous 1D microrod structure showed five times higher photocatalytic degradation performance toward methylene blue dye (MB) under visible light irradiation. The photocatalytic H2 evolution of the 1D nanostructure (34 μmol g−1) was almost 26 times higher than that of the bulk g-C3N4 structure (1.26 μmol g−1). Additionally, the photocurrent stability of this nanoporous 1D morphology over 24 h indicated remarkable photocorrosion resistance. The improved photocatalytic activities were attributed to prolonged carrier lifetime because of its quantum confinement effect, effective separation and transport of charge carriers, and increased number of active sites from interconnected nanopores throughout the microrods. The present 1D nanostructure would be highly suited for photocatalytic water purification as well as water splitting devices. Finally, this facile and room temperature strategy to fabricate the nanostructures is very cost-effective.

Core/Shell Structure of Mesoporous Carbon Spheres and g-C3N4 for Acid Red 18 Decolorization

“…For CS/GCN, the main (002) peak position is shifted of 0.05 • toward higher angels compared to the bulk GCN. It is due to the expansion of the interlayer stacking distance of the layers in GCN, and this confirms that the bulk GCN was exfoliated after acid treatment [33,43]. Moreover, in CS/GCN the diffraction peaks at 24 • and 43 • , attributed to carbon, are also detected.…”

“…Catalysts 2019, 9, x FOR PEER REVIEW 6 of 17 confirms that the bulk GCN was exfoliated after acid treatment [33,43]. Moreover, in CS/GCN the diffraction peaks at 24° and 43°, attributed to carbon, are also detected.…”

Heterostructured g-CN/TiO2 Photocatalysts Prepared by Thermolysis of g-CN/MIL-125(Ti) Composites for Efficient Pollutant Degradation and Hydrogen Production

“…The signals observed at 807, 739, and 657 cm −1 can be assigned to Ti-O-Ti-O vibrations [49]. For pure g-CN, the peaks located from 1658 to 1236 cm −1 correspond to the stretching modes of the carbon-nitrogen (C=N and C-N) bonds, while the sharp peak located at 806 cm −1 can be attributed to the out-of-plane breathing vibration of the s-triazine units [15,16,50]. The broad absorption bands at 3235 and 3154 cm −1 correspond to the stretching modes of NH 2 and NH functions.…”

Zirconia nanoparticle-modified graphitic carbon nitride nanosheets for effective photocatalytic degradation of 4-nitrophenol in water

“…This suspension was spin-coated on a fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) glass substrate at ambient conditions. At final stage, in order to increase the uniform distribution of the catalyst on the substrate, the prepared FTO films spin-coated with the catalysts were heated in oven at 60 °C for 2 h (Pawar et al 2016a). Figure 1a-c shows the XRD patterns of the g-C 3 N 4 , ZrO 2 , and ZrO 2 /g-C 3 N 4 nanocomposites.…”

“…Recently, another two-dimensional carbonaceous material, g-C 3 N 4 , has attracted significant attention (Gao et al 2014;Maeda et al 2014;Tan et al 2015;Tian et al 2014;Wang et al 2012;Wu et al 2014;Zheng et al 2012). Unique properties of g-C 3 N 4 including good visible-light absorption, moderate band gap (2.7 eV), high thermal and chemical stability, and photocatalytic properties introduce a new material for application in photocatalysis (Pawar et al 2016a(Pawar et al , 2017. The g-C 3 N 4 and g-C 3 N 4 -based structures have been used in various applications such as photo catalytic degradation of microbial, organic, and inorganic pollutants (Lan et al 2015;Li et al 2015;Papailias et al 2015;Pawar et al 2015Pawar et al , 2016b, hydrogen evolution from water splitting (Liang et al 2015;Liu et al 2015b;Xu et al 2015;Yang et al 2015b), sensors applications (Pany and Parida 2015;Wang et al 2015;Zhang et al 2015a), adsorption (Anbia and Haqshenas 2015;Chen et al 2015;Hu et al 2015), reduction of oxygen (Lu et al 2015;Zhao et al 2015), lithium-ion batteries (Liu et al 2015a;Luo et al 2015), biofuel cells (Yi et al 2015), and photochemo combination methods (Yang et al 2015a).…”