A dual strategy for synthesizing carbon/defect comodified polymeric carbon nitride porous nanotubes with boosted photocatalytic hydrogen evolution and synchronous contaminant degradation

Abstract Joint structure-modification strategies can effectively enhance photocatalytic activity of polymeric carbon nitride (PCN), but there still lack the carbon/defect comodification means, let alone research on its application in synchronous H2 evolution and contaminant degradation. Herein, a dual strategy was used to successfully synthesize carbon/defect (nitrogen vacancy) comodified PCN (cd-PCN) porous nanotubes with increased surface area and enhanced photoabsorption, charge separation, and photocatalytic H2 evolution. Benefiting from synergism of introduced carbon and defects, cd-PCN exhibits a ∼84 times higher H2 evolution rate (∼9.1 μmol h−1) than PCN with synchronous bisphenol A degradation by direct hole oxidation and a ∼13-fold higher H2 evolution rate (1704 μmol h−1) with triethanolamine as the electron donor under visible light irradiation. This work provides an efficient photocatalyst for simultaneous photocatalytic water splitting and contaminant degradation and expounds the significance of joint strategies in structure modification of PCN photocatalysts.