Potassium gluconate-cooperative pore generation based on g-C3N4 nanosheets for highly efficient photocatalytic hydrogen production and antibiotic degradation

Graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) photocatalysts are used to achieve photocatalytic activity under visible light, but they suffer from an unprecedented bottleneck period. These photocatalysts have many intrinsic shortcomings, such as their small specific surface area and inefficient separation rate of photogenerated electron-hole pairs. Therefore, changing the morphology and structure of g-C3N4 are essential challenges in addressing these shortcomings. Herein, we propose a novel one-pot method for constructing porous ultrathin g-C3N4 nanosheets. Melamine and potassium gluconate were effectively combined via a supramolecular assembly strategy. As a gas template, potassium gluconate decomposes to produce CO2 at high temperature. This novel potassium gluconate-cooperative pore generation on g-C3N4 nanosheets method is proposed for the first time. As a result, the PCN-1.4 (the optimum sample of porous ultrathin g-C3N4 nanosheets) photocatalyst has a large surface and a porous layer structure (67.95 m2 g−1, 0.3594 cm3 g−1 ) with abundant nitrogen defects. Furthermore, the porous ultrathin g-C3N4 nanosheets prepared by this method not only have good performance in hydrogen production, but also in TC degradation. On the one hand, the PCN-1.4 sample exhibits an excellent hydrogen production efficiency (2323 μmol.g−1 h−1) that is 12 times that of bulk g-C3N4 (192 μmol g−1 h−1). On the other hand, compared to the tetracycline hydrochloride degradation efficiency of bulk g-C3N4 of 22 %, PCN-1.4 exhibits a higher degradation rate as high as 83 %. In summary, a new pathway for the generative pore-making is provided to prepare other porous materials.