1. Post-annealed graphite carbon nitride nanoplates obtained by sugar-assisted exfoliation with improved visible-light photocatalytic performance.
- Author
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Liu, Wei, Yanase, Takashi, Iwasa, Nobuhiro, Mukai, Shin, Iwamura, Shinichiro, Nagahama, Taro, and Shimada, Toshihiro
- Subjects
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NITRIDES , *QUANTUM confinement effects , *GRAPHITE , *SURFACE reactions , *ELECTRONIC structure , *CARBON - Abstract
Two-dimensional (2D) graphitic carbon nitride (g-C 3 N 4) nanoplates (CNNP) have become a hot research topic in photocatalysis due to their small thickness and large specific surface area that favors charge transport and catalytic surface reactions. However, the wide application of 2D g-C 3 N 4 nanoplates prepared by ordinary methods suffers from increased band gaps with a poor solar harvesting capability caused by the strong quantum confinement effect and reduced conjugation distance. In this paper, a facile approach of exfoliation and the following fast thermal treatment of the bulk g-C 3 N 4 is proposed to obtain a porous few-layered g-C 3 N 4 with nitrogen defects. Due to the preferable crystal, textural, optical and electronic structures, the as-obtained porous CNNP demonstrated a significantly improved photocatalytic activity towards water splitting than the bulk g-C 3 N 4 and even the 3 nm-thick CNNP obtained by sugar-assisted exfoliation of the bulk g-C 3 N 4. The difference in the enhancement factors between the H 2 O splitting and organic decomposition has revealed the effect of N defects. This study offers insightful outlooks on the scalable fabrication of a porous few-layered structure with a promoted photocatalytic performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2020
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