Enhancement of the graphitic carbon nitride surface properties from calcium salts as templates

• Enhancement of surface properties of carbon nitride phases from Ca-salts templates.
• Calcium salts are alternatives to the usual silica templates.
• Calcium salts templates are cheap and easily produced in nanosized dimensions.
• This approach appears as a promising route to prepare highly porous g-C3N4.

A graphitic carbon nitride material with enhanced surface properties has been successfully synthesized from guanidine monohydrochloride used as carbon nitride precursor, and from calcium salts nanoparticles used as templates. The products were characterized by X-ray Diffraction (XRD), chemical analysis, Fourier Transform Infra-Red spectroscopy (FTIR), nitrogen adsorption, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) and Ultra-Violet Visible spectroscopy (UV–Vis). The results show that the products adopt a graphitic structure with basal planes made of carbon and nitrogen atom species linked together by single and double bonds in an aromatic array (s-triazine, tri-s-triazine ring). As a function of the amount of the calcium-based template, a series of mesoporous materials was prepared which had specific surface areas ranging from 24.0 to 39.4 m2/g and coupled with pore volumes of 0.13–0.22 cm3/g. Instead of using the usual silica hard templates, our results show that using CaCO3 and Ca3(PO4)2 nanoparticles appears to be an encouraging solution for developing the surface properties of the carbon nitride. The carbon nitride is a promising candidate in the field of photocatalysis.

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