Pretreatment strategies of precursors for efficient photocatalytic hydrogen production of graphitic phase carbon nitride

Abstract The most sustainable preparation method for nanostructured materials must be urgently determined. In particular, the influence of different precursor pretreatment strategies on the structure and photocatalytic performance of highly attractive Graphitic carbon nitride photocatalyst is necessary to determine the most effective precursor pretreatment strategy. In this paper, three different precursor pretreatment methods were used to prepare g-C 3 N 4 materials, so namely direct mixing (CN-C), freeze-drying, hydrothermal (CN-H) with thermal condensation polymerization two-step method processed urea, melamine and NH 4 Cl precursor mixtures. The results showed that NH 4 Cl, as a template, would not destroy the integrity of the tristriazine structural units in the product, and the CN-H sample had a lamellar structure, and the specific surface area and pore volume of the sample increased, which could provide more active reaction sites for photocatalytic H 2 production, had the highest and most stable H 2 evolution rate, up to 118.4 μ mol g −1 , about 1.7 times CN-C’s. This strategy provides a new idea for the design of g-C 3 N 4 photocatalyst.