Interface engineered construction of porous g-C3N4/TiO2 heterostructure for enhanced photocatalysis of organic pollutants

Abstract A porous g-C 3 N 4 /TiO 2 with hierarchical heterostructure has been successfully fabricated through a in situ assembling of small needle-like TiO 2 on the surface of ultrathin g-C 3 N 4 sheets. The ultrathin g-C 3 N 4 sheets with carbon vacancies and rich hydroxyl groups were found to facilitate the nucleation and in situ growth of TiO 2 and also to modulate the surface chemical activity of the g-C 3 N 4 /TiO 2 hierarchical heterostructure. The as-designed photocatalytic heterojunction degraded Acid Orange with 82% efficiency after 10 min under simulated solar light, and possessed excellent cycle stability. Relative physical characterizations and photochemical experiments reveal that engineering the interface/surface of g-C 3 N 4 plays a vital role in effectively constructing heterostructures of g-C 3 N 4 /TiO 2 , thus realizing efficient photoinduced electron-hole separation during photocatalytic process.