Tuning nitrogen defects and doping sulfur in carbon nitride for enhanced visible light photocatalytic activity

Defect construction and heteroatom doping are effective strategies for improving photocatalytic activity of carbon nitride (g-C₃N₄). In this work, N defects were successfully prepared via cold plasma. High-energy electrons generated by plasma can produce N defects and embed sulfur atoms into g-C₃N₄. The N defects obviously promoted photocatalytic degradation performance that was 7.5 times higher than that of pure g-C₃N₄. The concentration of N defects can be tuned by different power and time of plasma. With the increase in N defects, the photocatalytic activity showed a volcanic trend. The g-C₃N₄ with moderate concentration of N defects exhibited the highest photocatalytic activity. S-doped g-C₃N₄ exhibited 11.25 times higher photocatalytic activity than pure g-C₃N₄. It provided extra active sites for photocatalytic reaction and improved stability of N defects. The N vacancy-enriched and S-doped g-C₃N₄ are beneficial for widening absorption edge and improving the separation efficiency of electron and holes.