Bio-inspired nanostructured g-C3N4-based photocatalysts: A comprehensive review

As a new organic conjugated semiconductor, graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) is emerging as a fascinating material for various photocatalytic applications due to its adjustable electronic structure, outstanding thermal endurance, appealing chemical stability, low cost, and environmental friendliness. Nevertheless, unmodified bulk g-C3N4 possesses some intrinsic limitations related to poor crystallinity, marginal visible-light harvesting, easy recombination of charge pairs, small surface area, and slow charge migration, which give rise to the low quantum efficiency of photocatalytic reactions. One efficient strategy to overcome these shortcomings is the manipulation of the microstructures of g-C3N4. Other than the traditional structure control, mimicking the structures of creatures in nature to design and construct bio-inspired structures is a promising approach to improve the photocatalytic performance of g-C3N4 and even g-C3N4-based systems. This review summarizes the recent advances of the traditional structure-control of g-C3N4-based systems, and bio-inspired synthesis of g-C3N4-based systems from two aspects of structural bionics and functional bionics. Furthermore, the fundamentals of bio-inspired design and fabrication of g-C3N4-based systems are introduced in detail. Additionally, the different theoretical calculations, diverse photocatalytic applications and various modification strategies of bio-inspired structured g-C3N4-based systems are recapped. We believe that this work will be a guiding star for future research in the new field of biomimetic photocatalysis. (c) 2022, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

Graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) is a new type of organic conjugated semiconductor with adjustable electronic structure, outstanding thermal endurance, appealing chemical stability, low cost, and environmental friendliness, making it a fascinating material for various photocatalytic applications. However, unmodified bulk g-C3N4 has intrinsic limitations such as poor crystallinity, marginal visible-light harvesting, easy recombination of charge pairs, small surface area, and slow charge migration, resulting in low quantum efficiency of photocatalytic reactions. Manipulating the microstructures of g-C3N4 is an efficient strategy to overcome these shortcomings. Mimicking the structures of creatures in nature to design and construct bio-inspired structures is a promising approach to improve the photocatalytic performance of g-C3N4 and g-C3N4-based systems.