Simultaneous achievements of doping and structure engineering in carbon nitride for photocatalytic degradation

Carbon nitride (C3N4) has been recognized as a prospective photocatalyst while imperfections still remain due to the limited light response, fast charge recombination and low specific surface area. Developing facile modification strategy to simultaneous remit these limitations is highly desirable. Herein, a facile one pot method for simultaneous achievements of doping and structure engineering to prepare sulfur (S) doped C3N4 nanosheets (SCN-A) with structure defect was presented. The structure, optical properties, photocatalytic activity and carrier kinetics of prepared materials were investigated. The results indicate that SCN-A can harvest more visible light compared with pristine C3N4 by remedying the inferior position of sheet structure control strategy which compromises the light absorption due to the quantum confinement effect. In addition, SCN-A possesses a higher separation and transfer efficiency of photoinduced carriers because of the defect and sheet structure. Moreover, a higher specific surface area is obtained in SCN-A by blowing of gases released from ammonium chloride, thereby providing more active sites for degradation reactions. Enabled by these, the photocatalytic activity of SCN-A is enhanced significantly, and the degradation rate constants for Rhodamine B and tetracycline hydrochloride over the SCN-A are 5.10 times and 2.83 times that of pristine C3N4, respectively. The work presents facile method for the one-step activity enhancement of C3N4 on the basis of doping and structure control. •A facile one step calcination method for simultaneous achievements of doping and structure engineering was presented.•Sulfur doped C3N4 nanosheets with structure defect were successfully prepared.•The prepared C3N4 exhibited enhanced visible light absorption, charge separation efficiency and enlarged specific surface area.•The prepared C3N4 showed enhanced photocatalytic activity towards the degradation of dye and antibiotics.