Self-Assembled Mesoporous Carbon Nitride with Tunable\nTexture for Enhanced Visible-Light Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution

Abstract

Mesoporous\ncarbon nitride with novel morphology has been successfully\nfabricated by using ionic liquid and supramolecular precursor cyanuric\nacid-melamine complex as the template and precursor, respectively.\nThe texture of carbon nitride is controlled by adjusting the ionic\nliquid concentration and type. The results find that a disordered\nhollow carbon nitride box morphology with pores in the wall can be\nobtained under lower IL1 concentration. With increasing of ionic liquid\ncontent, the texture turns to be a layered structure. The disordered\nnanosheets and hollow tube with large pores in the shell can be fabricated\nby using IL-2 and IL-3 as templates, respectively. Besides, as-prepared\nmesoporous carbon nitride samples display the excellent light harvesting\nproperties and fast separation rate of photogenerated carrier. Moreover,\nmesoporous carbon nitride CN-0.1 exhibits a higher photocatalytic\nhydrogen evolution rate (120.3 μmol h^–1) under\nvisible light irradiation owing to the special structure and the presence\nof multiple mesopores, which is approximately 25.6, 1.7 times as high\nas that of bulk carbon nitride calcined by melamine and CN, respectively.\nFurthermore, photocatalytic RhB degradation rate is enhanced by using\nCN-0.1 compared with pure CN. This method provides more insights into\ndesigning novel visible light driven photocatalysts by using ionic\nliquids.