Efficient photocatalytic degradation of textile dye pollutants using thermally exfoliated graphitic carbon nitride (TE–g–C3N4)

Abstract Graphitic carbon nitride (g–C 3 N 4 ), an organic photocatalyst was reported to have beneficial properties to be used in wastewater treatment applications. However, g–C 3 N 4 , in its bulk form was found to have poor photocatalytic degradation efficiency due to its inherent limitations such as poor specific surface area and fast electron–hole pair recombination rate. In this study, we have tuned the physiochemical properties of bulk g–C 3 N 4 by direct thermal exfoliation (TE–g–C 3 N 4 ) and examined their photocatalytic degradation efficiency against abundant textile dyes such as methylene blue (MB), methyl orange (MO), and rhodamine B (RhB). The degradation efficiencies for MB, MO, and RhB dyes are…