Structural, optical, and photocatalytic properties of nano-scaled g-C₃N₄ materials

The graphitic carbon nitride (g-C₃N₄) has garnered significant attention in the past decade as a highly promising material for water splitting and organic pollutants (dye) degradation. In the present work, we synthesized the three different nano-scaled g-C₃N₄ samples with urea and thiourea in different weight ratios using the polycondensation method. The X-ray diffraction studies revealed that all the samples have shown the crystalline structure of g-C₃N₄ with two fundamental diffraction peaks of (002) and (100). The nano-scale nature of the sample is confirmed by Scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The band gap energy was also estimated for all the samples using Tauc plots. The synthesized materials have been used for dye degradation of methylene blue, Phenol red, and Coomassie brilliant blue. Among the three samples, the equal weight ratio of urea and thiourea sample shows the highest degradation of 53%, 45%, and 59% of methylene blue, Phenol red, and Coomassie brilliant blue respectively within 30 min time. Further, we have also reported the dye degradation with the effect of catalyst mass and time of UV light exposure.