Tremella-like porous carbon nitride co-doped with oxygen and carbon towards efficient visible-light-driven purification of wastewater

Abstract

Abstract Graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) has been regarded as a promising photocatalyst, but it still has great limitations due to poor charge separation and low surface area. In this study, we fabricated 3D tremella-like porous carbon nitride with O and C co-doping via continuous heat treatments of bulk g-C3N4 nanosheets and uracil. The as-obtained product (CNU-10) presents unique tremella-like porous structure with a high surface area of 47.72 m2g−1. The CNU-10 sample showed considerably enhanced visible light absorption and charge separation and consequently higher photodegradation activity against organic pollutant Rhodamine B (RhB) under visible light compared with g-C3N4. O2− and h+ were proved to be the main active substances of RhB photo-degradation on CNU-10. This work offered an effective and convenient post-doping method for preparing O and C doped g-C3N4 with optimized optical/electronic properties and photocatalytic activity, which is expected to be a useful method for constructing heteroatoms-doped photocatalysts.