Hydrogen-assisted Synthesis of Defective Triazine/heptazine Homostructured Nanosheets for Efficient CO₂...

Homostructure construction has been proven to be an effective method for boosting the photocatalytic activity of polymeric carbon nitride. However, the contribution of the intrinsic activity of molecular fragments in the catalytic performance of homostructured carbon nitride is yet to be explored. In this paper, a facile hydrogen-assisted strategy was used to synthesize triazine/heptazine intermolecular homojunctions (g-C₃N₄(MU-H)) with an ultrathin and defective structure, via the co-pyrolysis of melamine and urea precursors. Experimental characterizations and theoretical calculations indicated the copolymerization of triazine- and heptazine-based carbon nitride generated a homostructured interface with a large build-in electric field for efficient separation of photogenerated carriers. Owing to the synergestic effect between the homostructured interface and nitrogen vacancies, as-synethesized g-C₃N₄(MU-H) exhibited an outstanding activity for photocatalytic CO₂ reduction, with 14.45 μmol h^-1 CO yield, which was 23.5 and 3.64 times higher than those of bulk g-C₃N₄ and g-C₃N₄(M-H) synthesized from a single precursor, respectively. In this study, We provided a novel route for optimizing the charge separation efficiency of CO₂ photoreduction catalysts by constructing intramolecular homojunction.