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Updated: Feb 6, 2026

Light-driven Enzymatic Decarboxylation
Published on: May 22, 2016
Facile urea-assisted precursor pre-treatment to fabricate porous g-C3N4 nanosheets for remarkably enhanced
Jirong Bai1, Chaochuang Yin2, Haiyang Xu1
1Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China.
Abstract:
Hydrogen generation photocatalyzed by low-cost graphite carbon nitride (g-C3N4) is a fascinating and effective route to solve energy crisis, but is mainly limited by the few reactive sites, low carrier separation efficiency and mediocre visible-light utilization. In this work, these limitations were tackled through a facile eco-friendly precursor pretreatment by tuning bulk g-C3N4 into porous structure. This pretreatment restricted agglomeration in the subsequent condensation and created more porous channels for charge carrier transfer and more surface active sites for reaction. The modified g-C3N4 has larger surface area, broader visible-light response, enhanced electron migration capacity and prolonged lifetime of photogenerated carriers. These well-amended g-C3N4 nanosheets possess an average hydrogen evolution rate 5.7 times that of bulk g-C3N4. This work affords a facile, eco-friendly and scalable strategy to design or synthesize other porous materials.
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