Improving Carbon Nitride Photocatalysis by Supramolecular Preorganization of Monomers

• DOI: 10.1021/ja402521s
• Publication Date: 2013-05-06T07:38:13Z
• Authors: Menny Shalom; Sahika Inal; Christian Fettken...; Dieter Neher; Markus Antonietti
• Keywords: Carbon nitride; Rhodamine B; Carbon fibers; Cyanuric acid

Here we report a new and simple synthetic pathway to form ordered, hollow carbon nitride structures, using cyanuric acid-melamine (CM) complex in ethanol as starting product. A detailed analysis of the optical photocatalytic properties shows that optimum structures are formed after 8 h condensation. For this condensation time, find significantly reduced fluorescence intensity lifetime, indicating formation new, nonradiative deactivation pathways, probably involving charge-transfer processes. Enhanced charge transfer is seen well from drastic increase activity degradation rhodamine B dye, which shown proceed via photoinduced hole transfer. Moreover, show various CM morphologies can be obtained different solvents, leads diverse ordered architectures. In all cases, CM-C3N4 exhibited superior compared bulk material. The utilization hydrogen-bonded complexes opens opportunities for significant improvement synthesis, structure, toward an efficient photoactive material catalysis.