Dual role of nickel acetylacetonate in visible light enhanced hydrogen production and antibiotics degradation of nickel/nickel oxides embedded-graphitic carbon nitrides

The active sites on the surface of catalysts play a pivotal role in the photocatalytic technology. Herein, the tiny nickel/nickel oxides (Ni/NiO x ) were embedded in graphitic carbon nitride (CN) as active sites and the heterojunction of CN-supported Ni/NiO x (CN-mNi/NiO x ) has been developed by a rational one-step carbonization of nickel acetylacetonate and urea. The incorporation of nickel acetylacetonate plays dual roles in enhancing photocatalytic activity of CN-mNi/NiO x : (1) they could stabilize Ni/NiO x through the interaction with -NH x groups on CN, thereby making small size and good dispersion of Ni/NiO x . The Ni/NiO x active sites can be highly exposed to adsorption/activation O 2 and H 2 O molecules; (2) they acted as an interfacial connection to form a well-developed combined interface, which was beneficial to separation and transmission of photogenerated carriers . As a result, the CN-0.1Ni/NiO x sample shown a H 2 evolution of 31.56 μmol g −1  h −1 and the degradation efficiency of sulfathiazole (STZ) was up to 78.5 % within 240 min, which was 18.12 and 3.43 folds to bulk CN, respectively. The finding offers new opportunities to construct active sites on the surface of CN to achieve highly efficient photocatalytic performance, which exhibits great potential in the development of photocatalysts with excellent performance for energy conversion and environment remediation.