Protonic acid-assisted universal synthesis of defect abundant multifunction carbon nitride semiconductor for highly-efficient visible light photocatalytic applications

Abstract

To circumvent the low charge transportation efficiency, poor photocatalytic activity and selectivity of carbon nitride semiconductor, and achieve multifunction photocatalytic applications, the hexagonal tubular carbon nitride with abundant useful nitrogen defects and oxygen-containing defects have been successfully fabricated via supramolecular hydrogen-bonded self-assembly hydrothermal strategy. The resultant hexagonal tubular carbon nitride exhibits highly-efficient photocatalytic H2 evolution rate of 7.95 mmol·g−1 h−1 and photocatalytic CO2 conversion to CO with 92.4% selectivity, much better than that of most previously reported carbon nitride base photocatalysts. Moreover, the hexagonal tubular carbon nitride also achieves remarkable visible light photocatalytic NO removal efficiency of 81.97%, increasing by 65.95% than that of g-CN. This systematic and substantial work convincingly proved that the hexagonal tubular carbon nitride with abundant defects could be easily achieved by this approach, and provided a feasible strategy for highly-efficient photocatalytic H2 evolution, CO2 reduction and NO removal under visible light, simultaneously.