Unraveling the unique role of brown graphitic carbon nitride in robust CO2 photoreduction

Photocatalytic CO2 reduction is one of the important means to alleviate the energy crisis. In this work, an oxygen linked and brown graphitic carbon nitride (GACN) was successfully prepared by thermal polymerization after oil bath method. GACN introduced oxygen atoms on surface of BulkCN. Various characterizations of the material show that the prepared GACN has a different structure and higher photoelectronic activity compared to BulkCN. GACN possessed strong photocatalytic CO2 reduction capacity, and the photocatalytic activity was significantly improved compared with BulkCN. In view of density functional theory calculations, it is proved that the oxygen atoms introduced by GACN increase CO2 photoreaction reactivity, enhance electronic activity and reduce the reaction energy barrier. This work can have a positive effect on the photocatalytic application of g-C3N4 with the existence of oxygen atoms.