Design of melem-based supramolecular assemblies for the synthesis of polymeric carbon nitrides with enhanced photocatalytic activity

Author(s):  
Jiawei Xia ◽  
Neeta Karjule ◽  
Biswajit Mondal ◽  
Jiani Qin ◽  
Michael Volokh ◽  
...  

We design a new supramolecular assembly family as reactants to synthesize highly-photoactive porous polymeric carbon nitride (CN), based on a melem-constructed honeycomb, coupled with the insertion of small triazine analogs....

Nanoscale ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (14) ◽  
pp. 6876-6885 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuan-Yuan Li ◽  
Bing-Xin Zhou ◽  
Hua-Wei Zhang ◽  
Shao-Fang Ma ◽  
Wei-Qing Huang ◽  
...  

Structural defects can greatly inhibit electron transfer in two-dimensional (2D) layered polymeric carbon nitride (CN), seriously lowering its utilization ratio of photogenerated charges during photocatalysis.


Molecules ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (9) ◽  
pp. 1779 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asif Hayat ◽  
Mati Ur Rahman ◽  
Iltaf Khan ◽  
Javid Khan ◽  
Muhammad Sohail ◽  
...  

This work incorporates a variety of conjugated donor-acceptor (DA) co-monomers such as 2,6-diaminopurine (DP) into the structure of a polymeric carbon nitride (PCN) backbone using a unique nanostructure co-polymerization strategy and examines its photocatalytic activity performance in the field of photocatalytic CO2 reduction to CO and H2 under visible light irradiation. The as-synthesized samples were successfully analyzed using different characterization methods to explain their electronic and optical properties, crystal phase, microstructure, and their morphology that influenced the performance due to the interactions between the PCN and the DPco-monomer. Based on the density functional theory (DFT) calculation result, pure PCN and CNU-DP15.0 trimers (interpreted as incorporation of the co-monomer at two different positions) were extensively evaluated and exhibited remarkable structural optimization without the inclusion of any symmetry constraints (the non-modified sample derived from urea, named as CNU), and their optical and electronic properties were also manipulated to control occupation of their respective highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) and lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO). Also, co-polymerization of the donor–acceptor 2,6-diamino-purine co-monomer with PCN influenced the chemical affinities, polarities, and acid–base functions of the PCN, remarkably enhancing the photocatalytic activity for the production of CO and H2 from CO2 by 15.02-fold compared than that of the parental CNU, while also improving the selectivity.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Domcke ◽  
Johannes Ehrmaier ◽  
Andrzej L. Sobolewski

The photocatalytic splitting of water into molecular hydrogen and molecular oxygen with sunlight is the dream reaction for solar energy conversion. Since decades, transition-metal-oxide semiconductors and supramolecular organometallic structures have been extensively explored as photocatalysts for solar water splitting. More recently, polymeric carbon nitride materials consisting of triazine or heptazine building blocks have attracted considerable attention as hydrogen-evolution photocatalysts. The mechanism of hydrogen evolution with polymeric carbon nitrides is discussed throughout the current literature in terms of the familiar concepts developed for photoelectrochemical water splitting with semiconductors since the 1970s. We discuss in this perspective an alternative mechanistic paradigm for photoinduced water splitting with carbon nitrides, which focusses on the specific features of the photochemistry of aromatic N-heterocycles in aqueous environments. It is shown that a water molecule which is hydrogen-bonded to an N-heterocycle can be decomposed into hydrogen and hydroxyl radicals by two simple sequential photochemical reactions. This concept is illustrated by first-principles calculations of excited-state reaction paths and their energy profiles for hydrogen-bonded complexes of pyridine, triazine and heptazine with a water molecule. It is shown that the excited-state hydrogen-transfer and hydrogen-detachment reactions are essentially barrierless, in sharp contrast to water oxidation in the electronic ground state, where high barriers prevail. We also discuss in some detail the products of possible reactions of the highly reactive hydroxyl radicals with the chromophores. We hypothesize that the challenge of efficient solar hydrogen generation with carbon-nitride materials is less the decomposition of water as such, but rather the controlled recombination of the photogenerated radicals to the closed-shell products H2 and H2O2.


2014 ◽  
Vol 807 ◽  
pp. 101-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Theerthagiri ◽  
R.A. Senthil ◽  
J. Madhavan ◽  
B. Neppolian

The graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) materials have been synthesized from nitrogen rich precursors such as urea and thiourea by directly heating at 520 °C for 2 h. The as-synthesized carbon nitride samples were characterized by x-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis) absorption spectroscopy, photoluminescence (PL) and particle size analysis. The photoelectrochemical measurements were performed using several on-off cycles under visible-light irradiation. The x-ray diffraction peak is broader which indicates the fine powder nature of the synthesized materials. The estimated crystallite size of carbon nitrides synthesized from urea (U-CN) and thiourea (T-CN) are 4.0 and 4.4 nm respectively. The particle size of U-CN and T-CN were analysed by particle size analyser and were found to be 57.3 and 273.3 nm respectively. The photocatalytic activity for the degradation of the textile dye namely, direct red-81 (DR81) using these carbon nitrides were carried out under visible light irradiation. In the present investigation, a comparison study on the carbon nitrides synthesized from cheap precursors such as urea and thiourea for the degradation of DR81 has been carried out. The results inferred that U-CN exhibited higher photocatalytic activity than T-CN. The photoelectrochemical studies confirmed that the (e--h+) charge carrier separation is more efficient in U-CN than that of T-CN and therefore showed high photocatalytic degradation. Further, the smaller particle size of U-CN is also responsible for the observed degradation trend.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document