Oxygen-doped and nitrogen vacancy co-modified carbon nitride for the efficient visible light photocatalytic hydrogen evolution

Typical non-metallic semiconductor carbon nitride (CN) has enormous potential in the field of photocatalysis, but the easy recombination of the photo-generated charges severely limits its practical applications. Herein, oxygen-doped and nitrogen vacancy co-modified carbon nitride (ODCN) was prepared by simple reduction and oxidation treatments. The experimental results show that the modified CN can effectively enhance the photocatalytic activity, indicating that there is a synergy between oxygen doping and nitrogen vacancy. The photocatalytic hydrogen generation rate of ODCN is 364 μmol g−1 h−1, which is higher than that of bulk CN, nitrogen vacancy-modified carbon nitride (DCN) and oxygen-doped modified carbon nitride (OCN). As a consequence, our work provides a neoteric idea for the co-modification of carbon nitride by a variety of methods, which can significantly improve the photocatalytic activity of carbon nitride and is expected to be applied in practical applications.