Diaminotetrazine based mesoporous C3N6 with a well-ordered 3D cubic structure and its excellent photocatalytic performance for hydrogen evolution

Abstract

Novel nitrogen enriched diamino-s-tetrazine based highly ordered 3D mesoporous carbon nitride (MCN-9) hybrid materials with a body centered cubic Ia3d structure having high specific surface areas, large pore volumes, and tunable pore diameters were prepared by employing 3D body centered cubic KIT-6 mesoporous silica having a gyroidal porous structure and various pore diameters as the sacrificial hard template through a simple self-condensation followed by polymerization reaction of aminoguanidine hydrochloride inside the nanochannels of the KIT-6 template. Characterization results reveal that the prepared materials exhibit a 3D porous structure with well-defined mesopores and possess excellent physical parameters including high surface areas (157–346 m² g⁻¹), large pore volumes (0.36–0.63 cm³ g⁻¹), different pore diameters (5.5–6.0 nm) and a high N/C ratio of 1.87, which is much higher than that of ideal C₃N₄ (1.33). The deep yellow colored MCN-9 with a 3D porous structure also shows good absorption properties with a tunable narrow bandgap of 2.25–2.5 eV, which is again much lower than that of C₃N₄ (2.7 eV) and helps to achieve much higher photocatalytic water splitting activity than non-porous C₃N₄ and other carbon nitrides under visible light irradiation.