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Highly Ordered Nitrogen‐Rich Mesoporous Carbon Nitrides and Their Superior Performance for Sensing and Photocatalytic Hydrogen Generation
Author(s) -
Mane Gurudas P.,
Talapaneni Siddulu N.,
Lakhi Kripal S.,
Ilbeygi Hamid,
Ravon Ugo,
AlBahily Khalid,
Mori Toshiyuki,
Park DaeHwan,
Vinu Ajayan
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
angewandte chemie international edition
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 5.831
H-Index - 550
eISSN - 1521-3773
pISSN - 1433-7851
DOI - 10.1002/anie.201702386
Subject(s) - photocatalysis , materials science , stoichiometry , mesoporous material , band gap , carbon nitride , nitride , carbon fibers , dopant , hydrogen , nitrogen , nanotechnology , water splitting , photocatalytic water splitting , chemical engineering , optoelectronics , catalysis , chemistry , doping , composite number , organic chemistry , layer (electronics) , engineering , composite material
Mesoporous carbon nitrides (MCN) are fascinating materials with unique semiconducting and basic properties that are useful in many applications including photocatalysis and sensing. Most syntheses of MCN focus on creating theoretically predicted C 3 N 4 stoichiometry with a band gap of 2.7 eV using a nano‐hard templating approach with triazine‐based precursors. However, the performance of the MCN in semiconducting applications is limited to the MCN framework with a small band gap, which would be linked with the addition of more N in the CN framework, but this remains a huge challenge. Here, we report a precursor with high nitrogen content, 3‐amino‐1,2,4‐triazole, that enables the formation of new and well‐ordered 3D MCN with C 3 N 5 stoichiometry (MCN‐8), which has not been predicted so far, and a low‐band‐gap energy (2.2 eV). This novel class of material without addition of any dopants shows not only a superior photocatalytic water‐splitting performance with a total of 801 μmol of H 2 under visible‐light irradiation for 3 h but also excellent sensing properties for toxic acids.