Synthesis of highly porous g-C3N4 nanotubes for efficient photocatalytic degradation of sulfamethoxazole

Abstract

Abstract Pyrolysis of supramolecular assembly precursor is a promising method to prepare graphite carbon nitride (g-C3N4), and the topological structure of the precursor assemblies largely determine the morphology and photoelectric properties of g-C3N4. In this paper, uniformly and highly porous g-C3N4 nanotubes were synthesized under the assistance of 1,5-naphthalene disulfonic acid (NA) through the melamine (MA)-cyanuric acid (CA) precursor self-assembly strategy. The as-synthesized g-C3N4 nanotubes in the presence of 75\u2009mg/L NA (MNCA-75) exhibited the highest BET surface area (SBET) of 100.40\u2009m2/g, and the smallest band gap (Eg) of 2.31\u2009eV. 10\u2009mg/L of sulfamethoxazole (SMX) was completely degraded within 120\u2009min with the MNCA-75, and the degradation reaction conformed to pseudo-first-order kinetics. This paper reported a facile but effective method to prepare highly porous g-C3N4 nanotubes with large surface area and excellent photocatalytic performance.