Tailoring Grain Boundary Chemistry of Polymeric Carbon Nitride for Enhanced Solar H2 Production and CO2 Reduction

Photocatalytic water splitting is a promising and clean way to mimic the plant photosynthesis in a sustainable manner. Improvements of the quantum efficiency and optical absorption in the relevant range are certainly the further steps to approach practicality. Here, we reported that these issues can be readily addressed when 5‐aminotetrazole, a monomer with still higher nitrogen content, is used for the synthesis of carbon nitride. The molten salt mixture NaCl/KCl is used as a high temperature solvent to tailor the grain boundary structure and chemistry. Visible light quantum efficiency for H2 production of 0.65 could be obtained in the presence of K2HPO4 as double layer modifier. This value is very high, considering that this number is a convolute of light to charge couple conversion, charge localization, as well as a successful oxidation and reduction reaction.

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