Competitive assembling strategy to construct carbon nitride homojunctions for boosting photocatalytic performance

Both morphology and composition have a great influence on the properties and functions of materials, however, how to rational modulate both of them to achieve their synergistic effects has been a long -standing expectation. Herein, we demonstrate a competitive assembling strategy for the construction of metal-free graphite carbon nitride (CN) homojunctions in which morphology and composition can be eas-ily controlled simultaneously by only changing the ratio of assembly raw materials. These homojunctions are comprised of porous nanotubular S-doped CN (SCN) grafted with CN nanovesicles, which are de-rived from thermal polycondensation of melamine-thiocyanuric acid (M-T)/melamine-cyanuric acid (M-C) supramolecular hybrid blocks. This unique architecture and component engineering endows the novel SCN-CN homojunction with abundant active sites, enhanced visible trapping ability, and intimate inter-face contact. As a result, the synthesized SCN-CN homojunctions demonstrate high photocatalytic activity for hydrogen evolution and pollutant degradation. This developed strategy opens up intriguing opportunities for the rational construction of intricate metal-free heterostructures with controllable architecture and interfacial contact for applications in energy-related fields.& COPY; 2023 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of The editorial office of Journal of Materials Science & Technology.