Novel fluorine-doped carbon nitride as a highly efficient metal-free catalyst for organic contaminant degradation

The development of highly efficient metal-free catalysts is a challenge in the field of environmental remediation. Herein, melamine, cyanuric acid and polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) were innovatively self-assembled and pyrolyzed to prepare novel F-doped carbon nitride catalyst (F-CN). Density Functional Theory (DFT) revealed that the introduction of F induced electron rearrangement on the surface of carbon nitride and formed the nitrogen vacancies (NVs). The F and NVs synergistically induced the surrounding carbon atoms to be positively charged, facilitating the adsorption and activation of peroxymonosulfate (PMS) for bisphenol A (BPA) degradation, different from most previous reports that the identified nitrogen (N) served as the adsorption and activation site for PMS. The experimental results show that F-CN can effectively activate PMS and achieve 100 % BPA degradation within 9 min, with a rate constant of 0.658 min − 1 . Surprisingly, it can even reach 94.96 % BPA degradation rate at 0 °C, which is better than most reported metal free catalysts. Quenching experiment and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) test confirmed that 1 O 2 was the main reactive oxygen species (ROS). These findings provide new insights for the design and synthesis of new non-metallic catalysts.