A review of recent progress on photocatalytic carbon dioxide reduction into sustainable energy products using carbon nitride

Abstract

Worldwide air pollution caused a severe damage to ecosystem by the emission of greenhouse gases. The emission percentage of principal greenhouse gas—carbon dioxide, other gases methane, fluorinated gases and nitrous oxide still not decreased even after the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown. In this regard, many research works were reported on the techniques involved to convert the principal greenhouse gas- carbon dioxide into useful sustainable energy fuel. The advancement in the field of nanoscience and nanotechnology, nanomaterials are used as a photocatalyst to produce energy from greenhouse gas. Carbon nitride is a semiconductor with high stability to produce quantum confinement and reducing the recombination rate of charges, with the introduction of external nanoparticles. It was available in the reports hybrid carbon nitride nanocomposite was employed to reduce the carbon dioxide into valuable products. This review article emerged with an interest towards the carbon nitride’s activeness in the visible region as an effective photocatalyst in the photoreduction of carbon dioxide. Past six years research progress in developing carbon nitride's features to enhance its role in energy production by performing carbon dioxide reduction were given in detail.