S doping induces to promoted spatial separation of charge carriers on carbon nitride for efficiently photocatalytic degradation of atrazine

Abstract

Atrazine (ATZ), as one of the most extensively employed organochlorine-based herbicides, exhibits persistence and environmental toxicity. Photocatalytic technology based on polymer carbon nitride is regarded as a sustainable and promising approach for the degradation of emerging organic pollutants. Regrettably, the inherent shortcomings of pure carbon nitride greatly limit its practical application. Herein, S-doped carbon nitride was elaborately constructed for efficient degradation of ATZ. The removal efficiency of ATZ by the optimal sample (0.052 min−1) is 3.25 times as that of pure carbon nitride (0.016 min−1). Experiments and DFT calculations show that S doping optimizes electronic structure of carbon nitride, which significantly enhances the spatial separation and transfer efficiency of photogenerated electrons and holes. Moreover, the reactive sites and degradation paths of ATZ were predicted by Fukui function and LC-MS determination. Our work provides an effective approach for the design of efficient photocatalysts to achieve efficient environmental remediation.