In suit inducing electron-donating and electron-withdrawing groups in carbon nitride by one-step NH4Cl-assisted route: A strategy for high solar hydrogen production efficiency

Abstract

Owing to insufficient active sites, strongly bound excitons and insufficient optical absorption, polymer semiconductors have only shown mild activity as potential candidates for photocatalysis. A g-C3N4 with improved optical absorption capacity, charge transfer performance and porosity was successfully prepared by a one-step NH4Cl-assisted route. Interaction of melamine with NH4Cl preparation of Porous g-C3N4(CN-xy) with active functional groups modified pore wall shown to result in highly crystalline species with a maximum π-π layer stacking distance of heptazine units of 0.321 nm, decreases the optical band gap from 2.80 to 2.13 eV and maximum surface area reached 56.485 m2 g−1. The balanced improvement of the multiple defects of g-C3N4 makes the photocatalytic degradation of RhB and the photocatalytic hydrogen production efficiency 4 and 5 times higher than the pristine g-C3N4, respectively. Keywords: g-C3N4, Active functional groups, Porous, Trade-off, Photocatalytic