Transition Metal Modified Carbon Nitride: Preparation, Characterization, and Photocatalysis

摘要

Introduction Covalent carbon nitrides have been attracted great interest due to their potential applications as hard coating, lithium intercalation electrodes, metal catalyst supports, and hydrogen storage materials. Graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) possesses high chemical stability and unique electronic and optical properties, which are fascinating material as a heterogeneous catalyst. It is also found to be a metal-free polymeric photocatalyst with a typical semiconductor absorption setting at wavelengths of ～460 nm, capable of direct splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen with visible light. Recently, we found that iron ions embedded into the g-C3N4 can remarkably modify the electronic properties of g-C3N4, and extend its optical absorption to ～650 nm by iron complexation, resulting in a new bioinspired non-heme iron catalyst capable of activating H2O2 under mild conditions.. Here, we further extended our work to a series of g-C3N4 based catalysts containing transition metal, such as Mn, Co, Ni, and Cu. The catalytic/photocatalytic properties of the g-C3N4 based catalysts were also investigated.