Rational nanostructure design of graphitic carbon nitride for photocatalytic applications

Semiconductor photocatalysts have important applications in the fields of renewable energy production and environmental remediation. To overcome the drawbacks in the photocatalytic process, such as weak photoabsorption, low charge separation efficiency and insufficient surface reactive sites, many strategies have been developed in the past few decades. This review attempts to provide a comprehensive summary and update of some fundamental issues in nanostructure design of graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4). We focus especially on recent progress in designing and fabricating g-C3N4 photocatalysts with various dimensional structures, such as zero-dimensional quantum dots, one-dimensional nanorods and nanotubes, two-dimensional nanosheets, and three-dimensional nanospheres and nanoflowers, identifying the key factors in determining the photocatalytic efficiency, enumerating the wide range of new applications of g-C3N4 photocatalysts, and finally highlighting the crucial issues that should be addressed in the future in the aforementioned interesting research areas.