Abstract
g-C3N4 has drawn lots of attention due to its photocatalytic activity, low-cost and facile synthesis, and interesting layered structure. However, to improve some of the properties of g-C3N4, such as photochemical stability, electrical band structure, and to decrease charge recombination rate, and towards effective light-harvesting, g-C3N4–metal oxide-based heterojunctions have been introduced. In this review, we initially discussed the preparation, modification, and physical properties of the g-C3N4 and then, we discussed the combination of g-C3N4 with various metal oxides such as TiO2, ZnO, FeO, Fe2O3, Fe3O4, WO3, SnO, SnO2, etc. We summarized some of their characteristic properties of these heterojunctions, their optical features, photocatalytic performance, and electrical band edge positions. This review covers recent advances, including applications in water splitting, CO2 reduction, and photodegradation of organic pollutants, sensors, bacterial disinfection, and supercapacitors. We show that metal oxides can improve the efficiency of the bare g-C3N4 to make the composites suitable for a wide range of applications. Finally, this review provides some perspectives, limitations, and challenges in investigation of g-C3N4–metal-oxide-based heterojunctions.
Highlights
Graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) is a polymeric, visible-light-active photocatalyst with a bandgap of ~2.7 eV (~460 nm), that was introduced since 2006 [1]. g-C3N4 has become an important material in chemistry, physics and engineering because of its facile, low-cost, environmentally-friendly preparation methods with promising stability and good physicochemical properties for use in a wide range of applications [2]
As discussed earlier the results show that the bandgap of g-C3N4 prepared at 550 ◦C is narrower than those formed at 450 and 650 ◦C, so the structure prepared at the 550 ◦C absorbs more visible light, which can lead to the more appealing photoactivity
Li et al demonstrated that the photoelectrochemical TiO2/g-C3N4/CdS platform could be employed for the ultrasensitive determination of T4 polynucleotide kinase (T4 PNK) because this composite showed significant stability and reproducibility with high selectivity [557]
Summary
Graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) is a polymeric, visible-light-active photocatalyst with a bandgap of ~2.7 eV (~460 nm), that was introduced since 2006 [1]. g-C3N4 has become an important material in chemistry, physics and engineering because of its facile, low-cost, environmentally-friendly preparation methods with promising stability and good physicochemical properties for use in a wide range of applications [2]. Metal oxides are the most common ones to improve the efficiency of g-C3N4, e.g., increasing the light absorption and reducing the recombination of electrons and holes by promoting the separation of charge carriers. This is mainly due to their suitable band structures [13,14,15,16,17,18]. Nanomaterials 2022, 12, 294 absorption and reducing the recombination of electrons and holes by promoting the sep aration of charge carriers
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