Recent progress on band and surface engineering of graphitic carbon nitride for artificial photosynthesis

Artificial photosynthesis based on semiconductor photocatalysts has attracted great attentions recent years for its advantage in clean energy applications. Environmental friendly metal free semiconducting graphitic carbon nitride, which can be synthesized via simple pyrolysis of cheap industrial resources at low cost, with visible light photocatalytic activity for hydrogen evolution, oxygen evolution, hydrogen peroxide production and reduction of carbon dioxide has been intensively studied in recent ten years. On the way of developing highly active photocatalysts, publications focusing on graphitic carbon nitride have been dramatically increased especially in recent five years. These researches have revealed some key issues, which includes morphology, atomic composition, basal plane structure and defects, composites and type of co-catalysts, influence photocatalytic activity of graphitic carbon nitride based materials from different aspects. These aspects include light absorption, charge separation/migration and surface reactions, which can be categorized into band structure and surface activity characters of graphitic carbon nitride based materials. This review is focusing on engineering band and surface of graphitic carbon nitride for artificial photosynthesis. Through reviewing the recent progress on graphitic carbon nitride based artificial photosynthesis researches, it may provide more comprehensive and in-depth understanding for further designing of highly activity photocatalysts based on graphitic carbon nitride.