General synthesis strategy for hollow porous prismatic graphitic carbon nitride: a high-performance photocatalyst for H.sub.2 production and degradation of RhB

This paper reports a general synthesis strategy for the hollow porous prismatic graphitic carbon nitride obtained from a supramolecular precursor with prismatic morphology, which was synthesized via a one-pot hydrothermal process using melamine or other N-containing compounds as the starting materials, without any other assist reagents. The best g-C.sub.3N.sub.4 photocatalyst in this work possesses a high hydrogen evolution rate (3486 [mu]mol h.sup.-1 g.sup.-1, [lambda] > 420 nm and 14643 [mu]mol h.sup.-1 g.sup.-1 under full spectrum light) and superior photocatalytic activity in degradation of rhodamine B dye, giving a rate constant of 0.05032 min.sup.-1, almost 14.7 times than the bulk g-C.sub.3N.sub.4 under the visible light irradiation. The excellent photocatalytic performance is mainly attributed to the large specific surface area, more negative conduction potential and the faster separation efficiency of the g-C.sub.3N.sub.4 photocatalyst.