A facile soft-hard template cooperative organization approach for mesoporous g-C3N4 with high photocatalytic performance

The mesoporous graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) was prepared by a facile soft-hard template cooperative organization approach to creating pores, with the melamine used as the precursor, and the mixture of silica sol and F127 was employed as mesoporous templates. Nitrogen-deficient mesoporous g-C3N4 samples were obtained by modifying the addition of F127. In addition, samples prepared with combined templates (FMCN-x) were compared with those using only soft (FCN) and hard (MCN) templates, and the results showed there was a significant increase in specific surface area and photocatalytic performance. Among them, sample FMCN-4 exhibited the maximum specific surface area of 104.18 m2/g and pore volume of 0.346 cm3/g. The presence of F127 enhances the pore formation effect of the silica sol, resulting in even higher specific surfaces with even smaller additions of silica sol. This situation reduces the amount of template etchant used subsequently and produces it in a more environmentally friendly cooperative organization. On the other hand, the soft-hard template cooperative organization approach introduced nitrogen defects in the g-C3N4 material, and the C/N ratio increased to 1.09 for FMCN-4, which improved the photocatalytic performance. FMCN-4 exhibited 95.71 % degradation efficiency to methyl orange in 90 min under simulated visible light irradiation. FMCN-4 also exhibits excellent visible light photocatalytic properties and good cycling stability.