Issue 7, 2017

Ultra-thin nanosheet assemblies of graphitic carbon nitride for enhanced photocatalytic CO2 reduction

Abstract

A two-dimensional layered polymeric photocatalyst, graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4), is becoming the rising star in the field of solar-to-fuel conversion. However, the performance of commonly prepared g-C3N4 is usually very weak because of the high recombination rate of photogenerated charge carriers and a small amount of surface active sites. Here we demonstrate simultaneous texture modification and surface functionalization of g-C3N4via a stepwise NH3-mediated thermal exfoliation approach. The resulting g-C3N4 photocatalyst possesses a hierarchical structure obtained by the assembly of amine-functionalized ultrathin nanosheets and thus exhibits remarkably enhanced light harvesting, a high redox ability of charge carriers, increased CO2 adsorption and a larger amount of surface active sites, as well as improved charge carrier transfer and separation. Therefore the aforementioned hierarchical g-C3N4 consisting of amine-functionalized ultra-thin nanosheets shows much better performance for photocatalytic CO2 reduction than unmodified conventional g-C3N4 photocatalysts.

Graphical abstract: Ultra-thin nanosheet assemblies of graphitic carbon nitride for enhanced photocatalytic CO2 reduction

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
24 9 2016
Accepted
03 11 2016
First published
03 11 2016

J. Mater. Chem. A, 2017,5, 3230-3238

Ultra-thin nanosheet assemblies of graphitic carbon nitride for enhanced photocatalytic CO2 reduction

P. Xia, B. Zhu, J. Yu, S. Cao and M. Jaroniec, J. Mater. Chem. A, 2017, 5, 3230 DOI: 10.1039/C6TA08310B

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