Exploring The Effect of Precursors of Polymeric Carbon Nitride Nanosheets on their Photo and Electrocatalytic Applications

In the present study, we have performed a case study to understand the ability of bulk polymeric carbon nitride (P-CN) derived from various precursors such as urea, melamine, and dicyandiamide namely UCN, MCN and, DCN respectively via thermal condensation process and also their corresponding thermally exfoliated nanosheets such as TE_UCN, TE_MCN, and TE_DCN. Compared with the bulk P-CN, all the thermally exfoliated samples retained higher surface area and shows superior photogenerated charge carrier transfer and separation. Among the thermally exfoliated P-CN nanosheets, TE_UCN gives highly porous nanosheets with a specific surface area of 179 m(2)/g, and large band gap (3.01 eV). Despite its poor electronic band structure, the large surface area of TE_UCN has contributed more to the excellent photogenerated charge carrier separation, which resulted in their highest photocatalytic property against the degradation of an organic dye rhodamine B(RhB) under natural sunlight. The electrochemical experiments on all the three samples of nanosheets of P-CN revealed that TE_UCN is the best electrode material for supercapacitors. TE_UCN displays excellent capacitance properties in 0.5 M H2SO4 electrolyte with a specific capacitance of 128.7 Fg(-1). Finally, the electrocatalytic activity investigation of the samples of P-CN nanosheets revealed that TE_DCN has more catalytic activity towards HER. This study demonstrates that texture, electrochemical capacitance, electro and photcatalytic properties of nanosheets of P-CN can be improved by the judicial choice of the precursor molecules.