A new triazine-based covalent organic polymer for efficient photodegradation of both acidic and basic dyes under visible light

Abstract

A new triazine-based covalent organic polymer (named COP-NT), which showed high catalytic activities for the degradation of acidic and basic dyes, is synthesized. Its structure characteristics were fully investigated, which featured large specific surface area, homogeneous porosity, strong visible light absorption, excellent thermal stability and semiconductor performance. The as-prepared COP-NT exhibits good chemical stability both in acidic and alkaline aqueous solutions, which could be used as an efficient photocatalyst for the degradation of methyl orange (MO), rhodamine B (RhB) and methylene blue (MB). The E_a values for the degradation of MO, RhB or MB are 9.40 kJ mol⁻¹, 30.94 kJ mol⁻¹ or 17.54 kJ mol⁻¹, respectively. Furthermore, COP-NT showed excellent reusability in degrading all the above dyes without obvious performance decay.