Preparation of dispersible carbon nitride powder and fabrication of its thin films by wet-process

Abstract

To establish a low-cost and environment-friendly method for producing blue fluorescent materials and their thin films, we investigated the conditions for synthesizing graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) powder from urea and melamine. We found that urea can be used to synthesize g-C3N4 at lower annealing temperatures than melamine. The synthesized g-C3N4 powder showed good dispersibility in deionized water and methanol, and it was found that relatively uniform g-C3N4 thin films could be obtained by low-speed spin-coating, especially with highly volatile methanol dispersions. These results indicate that blue fluorescent thin films can be fabricated using a wet process at room temperature.