Abstract
Recently, graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4), a polymeric semiconductorhas been widely used as a low-cost, stable, and metal-free visible-light-active photocatalyst in the sustainable utilization of solar energy, such as water splitting, organic photosynthesis, and environmental remediation, which has attracted world wide attention from energy and environmental relative fields. Base on analysis of structure and theoretical calculation, the reasons that g-C3N4 can be used as a non-metallic catalyst were discussed in this paper. Some group's research jobs that metal-supported g-C3N4, metal-supported g-C3N4/organnic semiconductor compound and heterogeneous junction adjust the semiconductor electronic band structure have been summarized. And the mechanism, effect factors, and research developments on the reaction of organic degradation by photocatalytic and splitting water for hydrogen revolution catalyzed by above-mentioned modified g-C3N4 were emphatically analyzed. Finally, the prospects for the development of highly efficient g-C3N4 based photocatalysts are also discussed.
Highlights
Along with the rapid development of modern industrialization in recent years, people's demand for energy is increasing day by day, consuming a large amount of non-renewable fossil fuels and discharging greenhouse gases and toxic gases cause serious energy crisis and environmental degradation, which make human beings face severe survival challenges[1]
Addressing traditional photocatalyst of g-C3N4 has the problems of small specific surface area, high exciton binding energy, serious photogenerated carrier recombination and large band gap, which can not make effective use of solar light
A large number of research work has been carried out on composition-structureperformance regulation of g-C3N4, and many important research results have been obtained, which has deepened an understanding of the nature and basic law of g-C3N4 photocatalytic action
Summary
Along with the rapid development of modern industrialization in recent years, people's demand for energy is increasing day by day, consuming a large amount of non-renewable fossil fuels (such as coal, oil, and natural gas) and discharging greenhouse gases (such as CO2, SO2, and NOx) and toxic gases cause serious energy crisis and environmental degradation, which make human beings face severe survival challenges[1]. Compared with traditional TiO2 photocatalyst, g-C3N4 can effectively activate molecular oxygen to produce superoxide radicals for photocatalytic conversion of organic functional groups and photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutants[14] or inhibit the formation of hydroxyl radicals with strong oxidation ability to avoid peroxidation of organic functional groups[15] It can be used as visible photocatalyst for photocatalytic conversion of solar energy in theory. Wu' group[25] used fluorescein-sensitized Cu2(OH)2CO3/gC3N4 nanocomposite photocatalytic system, and the hydrogen production rate is 22.6 mol/h under visible light > 400 nm, which is 19.3 and 3.8 times that of pure g-C3N4 and unsensitized Cu2(OH)2CO3/g-C3N4, respectively
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