Synthesis of highly porous g-C3N4 nanotubes for efficient photocatalytic degradation of sulfamethoxazole

Abstract Pyrolysis of supramolecular assembly precursor is a promising method to prepare graphite carbon nitride (g-C3N4), and the topological structure of the precursor assemblies largely determine the morphology and photoelectric properties of g-C3N4. In this paper, uniformly and highly porous g-C3N4 nanotubes were synthesized under the assistance of 1,5-naphthalene disulfonic acid (NA) through the melamine (MA)-cyanuric acid (CA) precursor self-assembly strategy. The as-synthesized g-C3N4 nanotubes in the presence of 75 mg/L NA (MNCA-75) exhibited the highest BET surface area (SBET) of 100.40 m2/g, and the smallest band gap (Eg) of 2.31 eV. 10 mg/L of sulfamethoxazole (SMX) was completely degraded within 120 min with the MNCA-75, and the degradation reaction conformed to pseudo-first-order kinetics. This paper reported a facile but effective method to prepare highly porous g-C3N4 nanotubes with large surface area and excellent photocatalytic performance.