An overview on Ag modified g-C3N4 based nanostructured materials for energy and environmental applications

To address the increasing challenges of clean energy and environmental issues, the development of green technology is now of prime importance. Among all, photo catalytic processes represent attractive strategy to convert directly solar energy to chemical energy. Nanostructured heterogeneous photo catalysts in this field are important due to their unique structures and tunable electronic properties. In the field of photocatalysis, g-C3N4 is regarded as a potential candidate owing to its basic surface functionalities, electron-rich properties and H bonding motifs present in the network. Taking the advantages of g-C3N4 as a sustainable material, it has attracted dramatically increasing interest in the area of visible-light-induced photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutants and hydrogen generation. Still as a critical factor the high rate of electron-hole recombination limits its potential applications. To optimise g-C3N4, various strategies were already established. In this contribution, we have tried to address these issues by demonstrating Ag modified plasmonic photocatalyst with tailored plasmonic-metal nanostructures. This review highlights the recent significant advances in designing Ag modified g-C3N4-based nanocomposites to promote its photocatalytic activity. The rational strategies like nano-structure designing, heterojunction construction, band gap tuning of Ag modified g-C3N4 based nanocomposites are summarized. Moreover, this study reveals that the improved photocatalytic activity is due to SPR effect of Ag nanoparticles which shifts the Fermi level, shows superior light harvesting capacity through sensitization and efficient electron-hole separation at the interface by creating a schottky barrior. We expect that this review will inspire the readers to extend the applications of g-C3N4 in the field of photocatalysis in a green manner.