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Ultrathin porous g-CN nanosheets fabricated by direct calcination of pre-treated melamine for enhanced photocatalytic performance

  • 2D and Nanomaterials
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Abstract

Graphite nitride carbon nanosheets have received more and more attention toward the photocatalytic research and applications. Ultrathin g-CN nanosheets with porous structure were synthesized successfully by thermal calcination of melamine supramolecular complexes, which was obtained by pre-treating melamine in nitric acid solution at different concentrations (0.5–2 mol/L). Effects of HNO3 pre-treatment on the microstructure of supramolecular complexes were studied. The characteristics of g-CN nanosheets were investigated by X-ray diffractometry, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The degradation performance for RhB and water splitting hydrogen production performance were used to evaluate the photocatalytic performances of g-CN nanosheets. The morphology and microstructure of HNO3/melamine supramolecular complexes are different from those of melamine precursor due to the better arrangement of the melamine units. Ultrathin porous g-CN nanosheets which possess a thickness of less than 2 nm were successfully prepared by calcination of melamine pre-treated with 1.0 mol/L nitric acid. The g-CN(1.0) nanosheets possess the highest photocatalytic degradation performance and water splitting hydrogen production performance due to the effective separation of photogenerated carriers and high specific surface area providing a large number of active sites.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by the 111 Project “New Materials and Technology for Clean Energy” (B18018) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (JZ2019HGBZ0142).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, 230009, China

    Bangtong Zhu, Guangqing Xu, Xia Li, Zhiwei Wang, Jun Lv, Xia Shu, Jun Huang, Zhixiang Zheng & Yucheng Wu

  2. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, 230009, China

    Guangqing Xu, Jun Lv, Xia Shu & Jun Huang

  3. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, 230009, China

    Yucheng Wu

  4. Laboratory of Non-Ferrous Metals and Processing Engineering of Anhui Province, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, 230009, China

    Yucheng Wu

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  1. Bangtong Zhu
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Correspondence to Guangqing Xu or Yucheng Wu.

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Zhu, B., Xu, G., Li, X. et al. Ultrathin porous g-CN nanosheets fabricated by direct calcination of pre-treated melamine for enhanced photocatalytic performance. Journal of Materials Research 34, 3462–3473 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2019.294

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