Two dimensional graphitic carbon nitride Nanosheets as prospective material for photocatalytic degradation of nitrogen oxides

This study investigates the photocatalytic degradation of nitrogen oxides over graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) based photocatalysts. The synthesis procedure of g-C3N4 consists of two-step: in the first step, the synthesis of g-C3N4 is carried out through a microwave heating method, whereas in the second step the as-synthesized product is annealed. The characterization was carried out by XRD (X-ray Diffraction), FESEM (Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy), TEM (Transmission Electron Microscopy), BET (Brunauer-Emmet-Teller), and XPS (X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy). Photocatalytic activities for the degradation of NOx (Nitrogen Oxides) are compared with commercial TiO2 and g-C3N4, to investigate the structural and physio-chemical features of prepared samples and their correlation with the catalytic activity. The results show that g-C3N4 nanosheets have better activity and stability as compared to TiO2. The deposition effect of 1 wt% Pt to the g-C3N4 nanosheets is also observed which puts a negative effect on the degradation results. [Display omitted] •The material was synthesized by heating up the suspension at 110°C for 30 mins in microwave oven MAS-II plus at 300W.•It is observed through surface analysis the structure of g-C3N4 nanosheets is porous with an estimated pore size of 20 nm.•In XPS analysis the peak at 399.6 eV shows most of the nitrogen in g-C3N4 contributes to the C-N-C groups.•g-C3N4 nanosheets shows better performance as compared to TiO2 with 9.5% NO conversion and 0.33% photonic efficiency [ξ].