Visible Light-Driven Photocatalysts for Environmental Applications Based on Graphitic Carbon Nitride

Abstract

With the fast growth of the world population, advancement in living standards and rapid and uncontrolled development in industries have led to unstoppable release of organic, inorganic, and toxic industrial waste containing nonbiodegradable pollutants into the water system. Therefore, above pollutants in freshwater resulted in an environmental issue due to its detrimental effect on human health. Great efforts have been done in order to solve the industrial and environmental problems faced at global scale. Photocatalysis, a green and promising alternative approach, has attracted worldwide scientific interest due to complete degradation of pollutant. Graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) has attracted growing attention due to its fascinating properties, such as nontoxicity, low-cost fabrication, promising electronic band structure, and high thermal and chemical stability as well as visible light harvesting property. However, the photocatalytic performance of bulk g-C3N4 is limited at practical level due to its rapid recombination and delay in the transfer of photogenerated charge carriers. To overcome the innate problems and enhanced the photocatalytic performance of bulk g-C3N4, different methods have been applied. Among all designing a heterojunction semiconductor is a powerful approach to extend the photoresponsive range into visible region as well as promote the charge separation and transfer for enhancing the photocatalytic activity. Therefore, this chapter explores and summarizes the effective approach to construct the heterojunction for photocatalytic water treatment. Overall, it also assumes that this chapter will encourage further research and will open up new possibilities to construct new heterojunctions with g-C3N4. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021. All rights are reserved.