Synergistic photo-thermal catalytic NO purification of MnOx/g-C3N4: Enhanced performance and reaction mechanism

During the adsorption process, the reduced metal centers and oxygen defects are created thermally on MnOx and are sites of O2 adsorption and activation. During the PTCR process, g-C3N4 produces a large amount of photo-generated electron-hole pairs (e−-h+) under UV-Vis light irradiation, which could participate in the catalytic cycles to generate abundant O− and regenerate the active oxygen vacancy sites, thus accelerating the transformation of NOH and N2O2− to form nitrate species (NO3− or NO2−).