Recent advances of graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) based materials for photocatalytic applications: A review

Abstract

Photocatalytic solar energy conversion has drawn increasing attention, which holds great potential to deal with the energy crisis and environmental issues. As a typical semiconductor photocatalyst, graphite nitrogen carbon (g-C₃N₄) has been widely utilized owing to its nontoxicity and easy preparation properties. However, pristine g-C₃N₄ also faces the limitations of unsatisfactory light absorption, few active sites, and a rapid combination of photo-induced charge. To further optimize the photochemical catalytic performance of g-C₃N₄, tremendous efforts were devoted to modifying g-C₃N₄, including morphological regulation, element doping, and heterogeneous engineering. Some considerable progress has been achieved in g-C₃N₄-based photocatalytic hydrogen generation (PHE) from water splitting, photocatalytic carbon dioxide reduction (PCR), photocatalytic nitrogen reduction (PNR), photocatalytic removal of pollutants, and photocatalytic bacteria elimination. However, a frontier and comprehensive summary of g-C₃N₄-based photocatalysis is rarely reported. Herein, we provide an all-inclusive and updated investigation of the recent advances in modification methods of g-C₃N₄ and photocatalytic reactions based on g-C₃N₄ in the past five years. This conclusive remark may provide a new physical insight into the development of g-C₃N₄-based solar energy conversion.