Hydrogen-Bond-Mediated Self-Assembly of Carbon-Nitride-Based Photo-Fenton-like Membranes for Wastewater Treatment

Graphitic carbon nitride has emerged as a promising material for high-performance membranes with both filtration and catalytic abilities. However, the scalable construction of carbon-nitride-based membranes is seriously restricted by the poor ability to tailor the structure and poor solvent solubility of bulk nanostructures. Herein, carbon nitride sol was prepared in high yield and used as a precursor to assemble photo-Fenton-like membranes. Intermolecular hydrogen-bond interactions between carbon nitride nanofibers were found to be vitally important for the repolymerization of hydrolyzed molecules into dense and solid membranes. Intercalated Fe-containing polyoxometalates (Fe-POMs) not only acted as molecular linkers to construct carbon nitride membranes but also provided new opportunities for the catalytic functionality. Benefiting from the hydrophobic nanocapillaries in 2D carbon nitride for ultralow water carbon friction, self-assembled membranes effectively rejected pollutant molecules with high water permeation flux. The integration of carbon nitride photocatalysts with Fenton-like Fe-POMs contributed to the in situ degradation of retained pollutants. Thus, our work manifested a facile bottom-up strategy to construct photo-Fenton-like membranes with antifouling abilities for wastewater treatment.