A simple and efficient strategy for the synthesis of a chemically tailored g-C3N4 material

Tailored nanostructures offer a new way to facilitate electron-hole separation and offer additional opportunities to generate unique photocatalysts that demonstrate novel light absorption, thermodynamic and kinetic properties. A simple and efficient approach to the synthesis of a large variety of g-C3N4 tailored nanostructures is reported. Herein, NH3 and H2O2 were used as controllable chemical scissors to tailor bulk g-C3N4 to a large variety of g-C3N4 nanostructures, which include exfoliated porous, quantum dot, nanomites and nanospindles. The tailored g-C3N4 shows a photoreactivity of H-2 evolution 3.0 (pure water) and 4.1 (saturated KCl solution) times higher than bulk g-C3N4 under lambda > 420 nm. We believe this strategy affords new opportunities for structural tuning of X-doped (X = N, S, P, and O) carbon materials, as well as their exploration in catalysis, organic synthesis, nanomedicine and energy storage.