Improving Carbon Nitride Photocatalysis by Supramolecular Preorganization of Monomers

Here we report a new and simple synthetic pathway to form ordered, hollow carbon nitride structures, using a cyanuric acid-melamine (CM) complex in ethanol as a starting product. A detailed analysis of the optical and photocatalytic properties shows that optimum hollow carbon nitride structures are formed after 8 h of condensation. For this condensation time, we find a significantly reduced fluorescence intensity and lifetime, indicating the formation of new, nonradiative deactivation pathways, probably involving charge-transfer processes. Enhanced charge transfer is seen as well from a drastic increase of the photocatalytic activity in the degradation of rhodamine B dye, which is shown to proceed via…