Biomolecule-assisted synthesis of carbon nitride and sulfur-doped carbon nitride heterojunction nanosheets : an efficient heterojunction photocatalyst for photoelectrochemical applications

• Main Authors: Tao, Hua Bing, Chen, Jiazang, Miao, Jianwei, Liu, Bin, Yang, Hongbin
• Other Authors: School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Chemical engineering
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/103864; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/20042
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

A biomolecule-assisted pyrolysis method has been developed to synthesize sulfur-doped graphitic carbon nitride (CNS) nanosheets. During the synthesis, sulfur could be introduced as a dopant into the lattice of carbon nitride (CN). Sulfur doping changed the texture as well as relative band positions of CN. By growing CN on preformed sulfur-doped CN nanosheets, composite CN/CNS heterojunction nanosheets were constructed, which significantly enhanced the photoelectrochemical performance as compared with various control counterparts including CN, CNS and physically mixed CN and CNS (CN+CNS). The enhanced photoelectrochemical performance of CN/CNS heterojunction nanosheets could be ascribed to the efficient separation of photoexcited charge carriers across the heterojunction interface. The strategy of designing and preparing CN/CNS heterojunction photocatalysts in this work can open up new directions for the construction of all CN-based heterojunction photocatalysts.