Recent development in graphitic carbon nitride based photocatalysis for hydrogen generation

[Display omitted] •The recent advances of graphitic carbon nitride for the hydrogen production and photocatalytic water splitting were summarized.•The drawbacks and the solution to overcome it have been discussed.•The advanced strategies to increase the performance of graphitic carbon nitride have been systematically discussed. The future energy crisis and environmental degradation can only mitigate by harvesting solar energy into renewable, safe, economical and clean technology like water splitting. The graphitic carbon nitride has an attractive band structure, good chemical stability, earth-abundant and significantly easily fabricated which makes an application for the generation of hydrogen by water splitting. In this paper, we try to critically focus on the current progress and future development of the different strategies of water splitting using graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) for hydrogen generation. In this context, we discuss recent strategies like metal and non-metal doping (electronic structure), morphology tuning (geometric structuring), use of mediators (Z-scheme technology), defects engineering, plasmonic materials, dye-sensitization, perovskite oxides, carbon nitrides, carbon dots, metal organic framework, and a bimetallic cocatalyst. Finally, we summarize the recent advances and future developments of g-C3N4 bases photocatalysis.