Facile nitrogen and sulfur deficient engineering on sulfur doped g-C₃N₄ for efficiently photocatalytic H₂ evolution

Graphitic carbon nitride (g-C₃N₄) gets lots of attention as a promising candidate in solar energy conversion. However, the single modification method has limited effectiveness to access highly photocatalytic performance g-C₃N₄ catalyst. In this work, we present a facile method that can construct nitrogen and sulfur defects in the synthesis process of sulfur-doped g-C₃N₄. As results, nitrogen and sulfur deficient sulfur-doped g-C₃N₄ catalyst (SCND-x) integrate the advantages of these two modification methods. SCND-x exhibit a wide light absorption range and an efficient photocarriers separation ability. The optimal sample SCND-3 shows an excellent photocatalytic property with a hydrogen evolution rate of 70.2 μmol h⁻¹ under visible light excitation (λ > 420 nm), which is about 23.4 times better than pristine g-C₃N₄ (MCN). And the apparent quantum efficiency of SCND-3 is up to 3.3% at 420 nm. In a word, we successfully practice a facile method to prepare high photocatalytic activity catalyst by introducing nitrogen and sulfur defects in sulfur-doped g-C₃N₄.