Synthesis and photo-catalytic activity of porous g-C3N4: Promotion effect of nitrogen vacancy in H2 evolution and pollutant degradation reactions

Abstract

Different density nitrogen vacancy modified g-C3N4 photocatalysts were successfully prepared, and investigated their photocatalytic performance for H2 evolution and pollutant degradation. In this system, the increase of nitrogen vacancy density could enable the conduction band position of resultant g-C3N4 to negative shift compared to previous g-C3N4. Meanwhile, various positive factors were also introduced in this system, such as larger surface areas, the improvement of light response capacity, effective separation of photogenerated charge, resulting in resultant g-C3N4 photocatalysts exhibiting evident improvement of photocatalytic performance for H2 evolution and pollutant degradation. Obviously, this work provides physico-chemical insights for the nature of the promotion effect of nitrogen vacancies.