Facile one-pot synthesis of Mg-doped g-C3N4 for photocatalytic reduction of CO2

Xinyue Dong; Suicai Zhang; Hualin Wu; Zhuo Kang; Li Wang

doi:10.1039/c9ra04606b

Facile one-pot synthesis of Mg-doped g-C₃N₄ for photocatalytic reduction of CO₂

RSC Adv. 2019 Sep 13;9(49):28894-28901. doi: 10.1039/c9ra04606b. eCollection 2019 Sep 9.

Authors

Xinyue Dong¹, Suicai Zhang², Hualin Wu², Zhuo Kang^{2

3}, Li Wang^{1

4}

Affiliations

¹ School of Energy and Environmental Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing Beijing 100083 China wangli@ces.ustb.edu.cn.
² State Key Laboratory for Advanced Metals and Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing Beijing 100083 P. R. China.
³ Beijing Municipal Key Laboratory of New Energy Materials and Technologies, University of Science and Technology Beijing Beijing 100083 P. R. China.
⁴ Key Laboratory of Resource-Oriented Treatment of Industrial Pollutants Beijing 100083 China.

Abstract

Graphitic carbon nitride (g-C₃N₄) has attracted wide attention due to its potential in solving energy and environmental issues. However, rapid charge recombination and a narrow visible light absorption region limit its performance. In our study, Mg-doped g-C₃N₄ was synthesized through a facile one-pot strategy for CO₂ reduction. After Mg doping, the light utilization efficiency and photo-induced electron-hole pair separation efficiency of the catalysts were improved, which could be due to the narrower band gap and introduced midgap states. The highest amounts of CO and CH₄ were obtained on Mg-CN-4% under ultraviolet light illumination, which were about 5.1 and 3.8 times that of pristine g-C₃N₄, respectively; the yield of CO and CH₄ reached 12.97 and 7.62 μmol g^-1 under visible light irradiation. Our work may provide new insight for designing advanced photocatalysts in energy conversion applications.