Synergy of CuO and g-C3N4 for boosting hydrogen peroxide photosynthesis†

Carbon nitride is a promising photocatalyst for hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) production under visible light irradiation. However, current carbon nitride-based photocatalysts show limited H₂O₂ production owing to high impedance and poor charge transfer ability. In this work, we present a series of CuO decorated graphitic phase carbon nitride (g-C₃N₄) composites, exhibiting suitable bandgaps for the photocatalytic production of H₂O₂. The experimental results showed that CuO/g-C₃N₄ composites exhibited excellent photocatalytic H₂O₂ production performance and good photocatalytic cycle stability. Significantly, the optimized 30%-CuO/g-C₃N₄ composite exhibits a high H₂O₂ yield of 2722.47 μmol L⁻¹ with the addition of CH₃OH under visible light. Furthermore, the photocatalytic mechanism is well studied by density functional theory calculations. This work demonstrates that CuO/g-C₃N₄ composites hold great promise for photocatalytic H₂O₂ production application.