A urea precursor to synthesize carbon nitride with mesoporosity for enhanced activity in the photocatalytic removal of phenol

Shu Chin Lee; Hendrik O Lintang; Leny Yuliati

doi:10.1002/asia.201200383

A urea precursor to synthesize carbon nitride with mesoporosity for enhanced activity in the photocatalytic removal of phenol

Chem Asian J. 2012 Sep;7(9):2139-44. doi: 10.1002/asia.201200383. Epub 2012 Jun 25.

Authors

Shu Chin Lee¹, Hendrik O Lintang, Leny Yuliati

Affiliation

¹ Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 UTM Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia.

PMID: 22733646
DOI: 10.1002/asia.201200383

Abstract

A urea precursor was used for the first time to prepare mesoporous carbon nitride (MCN) by a thermal polymerization process with silica nanospheres as a hard template. Although the prepared MCN samples have similar structures and optical properties, it was revealed that the specific surface area, pore-size distribution, and morphology of the MCN samples depend on the initial mass ratio of urea to silica. Compared to the bulk carbon nitride (BCN) that only gave 20% phenol removal (6 h of irradiation), the activities can be enhanced up to 74% on MCN samples for photocatalytic removal of phenol under visible-light irradiation. The highest conversion was obtained on MCN with an initial mass ratio of urea to silica of 5, which has high surface area of 191 m(2) g(-1) and a nanoporous structure with uniform pore-size distribution of 7 nm. In addition to the high activity, the MCN sample also showed high photocatalytic stability.