Rational Ionothermal Co-polymerization of TCNQ With PCN Semiconductor For Enhanced Photocatalytic Full Water Splitting.

Photocatalytic full water splitting is a perfect way to produce oxygen (O2) and hydrogen (H2) gases driven by sunlight to address the future environmental issues as well as energy demands. Polymeric carbon nitride (PCN) has been one of the most widely investigated semiconductor photocatalysts in recent years due to its unique properties. However, the blank PCN typically shows restrained photocatalytic performance due to high-density defects in its framework that could play the role of a recombination center for photogenerated electron-hole pairs. Therefore, to overcome this problem, we report a simple approach to introduce 7,7,8,8-tetracyanoquinodimethane (TCNQ), an organic electron acceptor monomer as a modifier into the pristine PCN framework by the ionothermal method to enhance its optical, conductive and photocatalytic properties. Results show that such integration of TCNQ in the heptazine structure of PCN causes a prodigious delocalization in its π-conjugated system as well as significant changes in ...