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Vol. 13 (2021)

Band Engineering and Morphology Control of Oxygen-Incorporated Graphitic Carbon Nitride Porous Nanosheets for Highly Efficient Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution

https://doi.org/10.1007/s40820-020-00571-6
Yunyan Wu
Key Laboratory for Soft Chemistry and Functional Materials, Ministry of Education, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, People’s Republic of China
Pan Xiong
Key Laboratory for Soft Chemistry and Functional Materials, Ministry of Education, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, People’s Republic of China
Jianchun Wu
School of Materials Science and Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, People’s Republic of China
Zengliang Huang
School of Materials Science and Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, People’s Republic of China
Jingwen Sun
Key Laboratory for Soft Chemistry and Functional Materials, Ministry of Education, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, People’s Republic of China
Qinqin Liu
School of Materials Science and Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, People’s Republic of China
Xiaonong Cheng
School of Materials Science and Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, People’s Republic of China
Juan Yang
Key Laboratory for Soft Chemistry and Functional Materials, Ministry of Education, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, People’s Republic of China
Junwu Zhu
Key Laboratory for Soft Chemistry and Functional Materials, Ministry of Education, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, People’s Republic of China
Yazhou Zhou
School of Materials Science and Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, People’s Republic of China

Corresponding Author: Yazhou Zhou

yazhou@ujs.edu.cn

Nano-Micro Letters, Vol. 13 (2021), Article Number: 48

Abstract

Graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4)-based photocatalysts have shown great potential in the splitting of water. However, the intrinsic drawbacks of g-C3N4, such as low surface area, poor diffusion, and charge separation efficiency, remain as the bottleneck to achieve highly efficient hydrogen evolution. Here, a hollow oxygen-incorporated g-C3N4 nanosheet (OCN) with an improved surface area of 148.5 m2 g−1 is fabricated by the multiple thermal treatments under the N2/O2 atmosphere, wherein the C–O bonds are formed through two ways of physical adsorption and doping. The physical characterization and theoretical calculation indicate that the O-adsorption can promote the generation of defects, leading to the formation of hollow morphology, while the O-doping results in reduced band gap of g-C3N4. The optimized OCN shows an excellent photocatalytic hydrogen evolution activity of 3519.6 μmol g−1 h−1 for ~ 20 h, which is over four times higher than that of g-C3N4 (850.1 μmol g−1 h−1) and outperforms most of the reported g-C3N4 catalysts.


Highlights:


1 The multiple thermal treatments strategy is proposed for preparing the hollow oxygen-incorporated g-C3N4 nanosheets (OCN).
2 Oxygen-adsorption creates a lot of defects to the formation of hollow and monolayered structure, while oxygen-doping reduces the band gap significantly.
3 OCN exhibits stable and high photocatalytic hydrogen evolution with increased surface area, enhanced charge transport, and reduced band gap.

Keywords

Graphitic carbon nitride nanosheet Hollow morphology Oxygen incorporating Multiple thermal treatment Photocatalytic hydrogen evolution
Wu, Yunyan, Pan Xiong, Jianchun Wu, Zengliang Huang, Jingwen Sun, Qinqin Liu, Xiaonong Cheng, Juan Yang, Junwu Zhu, and Yazhou Zhou. 2021. “Band Engineering and Morphology Control of Oxygen-Incorporated Graphitic Carbon Nitride Porous Nanosheets for Highly Efficient Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution”. Nano-Micro Letters 13 (January):48. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40820-020-00571-6.
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