TY - JOUR
T1 - Alkali-assisted hydrothermal preparation of g-C3N4/rGO nanocomposites with highly enhanced photocatalytic NOx removal activity
AU - Gu, Zhanyong
AU - Zhang, Biao
AU - Asakura, Yusuke
AU - Tsukuda, Satoshi
AU - Kato, Hideki
AU - Kakihana, Masato
AU - Yin, Shu
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was partly supported by the JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas “Mixed anion” (No. 16H06439 ), the Dynamic Alliance for Open Innovations Bridging Human, Environment and Materials, the Cooperative Research Program of “Network Joint Research Center for Materials and Devices” and the Nippon Sheet Glass Foundation for Materials Science and Engineering, Z.G. thanks the China Scholarship Council for providing the scholarship.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020
PY - 2020/8/15
Y1 - 2020/8/15
N2 - Graphitic carbon nitride / reduced graphene oxide (g-C3N4/rGO) nanocomposites have become research hotspots owing to its excellent charge carrier separation efficiency and enhanced photocatalytic activity. Herein, we developed a facile alkali-assisted hydrothermal strategy to prepare g-C3N4/rGO nanocomposites. In the hydrothermal process, the NaOH not only played an important role in etching the bulk g-C3N4 into nanosheets to increase its specific surface area and active sites, but also promoted the reduction of GO to enhance the conductivity of rGO. The rGO sheets could act as an excellent electron acceptor and electronic conductive channels to improve the separation efficiency of photogenerated electron-hole pairs. The resultant g-C3N4/rGO nanocomposites exhibited 2.7 times higher photocatalytic NOx removal activity than that of bulk g-C3N4 due to the enlarged specific surface area and the enhanced separation efficiency of photogenerated carriers. Moreover, the obtained metal-free photocatalyst displayed outstanding photocatalytic performance under visible light irradiation (λ˃400 nm), compared with previously reported traditional-metal-based semiconductor photocatalysts. This work may provide new insights into preparing g-C3N4/rGO nanocomposites with enhanced photocatalytic activity.
AB - Graphitic carbon nitride / reduced graphene oxide (g-C3N4/rGO) nanocomposites have become research hotspots owing to its excellent charge carrier separation efficiency and enhanced photocatalytic activity. Herein, we developed a facile alkali-assisted hydrothermal strategy to prepare g-C3N4/rGO nanocomposites. In the hydrothermal process, the NaOH not only played an important role in etching the bulk g-C3N4 into nanosheets to increase its specific surface area and active sites, but also promoted the reduction of GO to enhance the conductivity of rGO. The rGO sheets could act as an excellent electron acceptor and electronic conductive channels to improve the separation efficiency of photogenerated electron-hole pairs. The resultant g-C3N4/rGO nanocomposites exhibited 2.7 times higher photocatalytic NOx removal activity than that of bulk g-C3N4 due to the enlarged specific surface area and the enhanced separation efficiency of photogenerated carriers. Moreover, the obtained metal-free photocatalyst displayed outstanding photocatalytic performance under visible light irradiation (λ˃400 nm), compared with previously reported traditional-metal-based semiconductor photocatalysts. This work may provide new insights into preparing g-C3N4/rGO nanocomposites with enhanced photocatalytic activity.
KW - Alkali
KW - NO
KW - Photocatalysis
KW - g-CN/rGO
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U2 - 10.1016/j.apsusc.2020.146213
DO - 10.1016/j.apsusc.2020.146213
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85083675875
SN - 0169-4332
VL - 521
JO - Applied Surface Science
JF - Applied Surface Science
M1 - 146213
ER -