Nitrogen rich carbon nitride synthesized by copolymerization with enhanced visible light photocatalytic hydrogen evolution

A novel method for preparing visible light enhanced photocatalytic carbon nitride was developed by copolymerization of melamine with a nitrogen rich precursor. The synthesized carbon nitride, CN–THDTx, with a unique structure exhibits strong visible light absorption ability. XPS results confirmed that the as-prepared CN–THDTx contains abundant nitrogen in a range of 53.0–77.4 at%. Moreover, the band gap can be efficiently controlled by changing the ratio of THDT. Under visible light irradiation, CN–THDT0.15 exhibited the highest hydrogen production (2.3 times than pure g-C3N4). After twelve continuous cycling experiments for hydrogen production for 4 h and carrying out one experiment for 48 h, the photocatalytic activity of CN–THDT0.15 showed negligible change, suggesting that the prepared sample has great potential application for photocatalytic generation of hydrogen from water splitting.