Graphitic carbon nitride materials: controllable synthesis and applications in fuel cells and photocatalysis
Graphitic carbon nitrides (g-C 3 N 4 ) are becoming increasingly significant due to the theoretical prediction of their unusual properties and promising applications ranging from photocatalysis, heterogeneous catalysis, to fuel cells. Recently, a variety of nanostructured and nanoporous g-C 3 N 4 ma...
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| Published in | Energy & environmental science Vol. 5; no. 5; pp. 6717 - 6731 |
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| Main Authors | , , , , |
| Format | Journal Article |
| Language | English |
| Published |
01.05.2012
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| Subjects | |
| Online Access | Get full text |
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| Summary: | Graphitic carbon nitrides (g-C
3
N
4
) are becoming increasingly significant due to the theoretical prediction of their unusual properties and promising applications ranging from photocatalysis, heterogeneous catalysis, to fuel cells. Recently, a variety of nanostructured and nanoporous g-C
3
N
4
materials have been developed for a wide range of new applications. This feature article gives, at first, an overview on the synthesis of g-C
3
N
4
nanomaterials with controllable structure and morphology, and secondly, presents and categorizes applications of g-C
3
N
4
as multifunctional metal-free catalysts for environmental protection, energy conversion and storage. A special emphasis is placed on the potential applications of nanostructured g-C
3
N
4
in the areas of artificial photocatalysis for hydrogen production, oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) for fuel cells, and metal-free heterogeneous catalysis. Finally, this perspective highlights crucial issues that should be addressed in the future in the aforementioned exciting research areas.
Nanostructured g-C
3
N
4
metal-free catalysts have great potential in photocatalytic hydrogen production, fuel cell technology and heterogeneous catalysis. |
|---|---|
| Bibliography: | 2 S. Z. Qiao received his PhD degree in chemical engineering from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2000, and is currently an Associate Professor at AIBN of the University of Queensland. His research expertise is in nanomaterials and nanoporous materials for bioseparations, drug/gene delivery and new energy technologies. He has co-authored more than 135 papers in refereed journals, and has filed four patents on novel nanomaterials that are promising for drug/gene delivery, fuel cells, photocatalysis and solar cells. He will move to the School of Chemical Engineering of The University of Adelaide to take a full professor position in February of 2012. Dr Jian Liu is currently an Australian Postdoctoral Fellow (APD) at AIBN, UQ, Australia. He obtained his PhD degree in Physical Chemistry from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP), Chinese Academy of Science (CAS), China, in 2008 under supervision of Prof. Qihua Yang and Prof. Can Li. He joined AIBN, UQ as a research fellow, where his research interests include synthesis of hollow, yolk shell nanostructured materials as delivery vehicles and nanoreactors, colloidal polymer and carbon spheres for energy storage. He was honoured with the prestigious UQ Foundation Research Excellence Award and ARC APD Fellowship. Mietek Jaroniec received his MS and PhD from M. Curie-Sklodowska University, Poland in 1972 and 1976, respectively. Since 1991 he has been a Professor of Chemistry at Kent State University, Kent, Ohio (USA). His research interests revolve primarily around interdisciplinary topics of interfacial chemistry, chemical separations, and chemistry of materials, including physical adsorption at the gas/solid and liquid/solid interfaces, gas and liquid chromatography, adsorbents and catalysts. At Kent State he has established a vigorous research program in the area of ordered nanoporous materials such as ordered mesoporous silicas, organosilicas, inorganic oxides and carbons, focusing on their synthesis and environmental and energy-related applications. etc. Yao Zheng obtained his BS and MS in Chemical Engineering in 2006 and 2009 respectively at Nanjing University of Technology (China). He is currently studying as a PhD candidate in Prof. Qiao's group at Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN), the University of Queensland (Australia). His research interests focus on the development of nanostructured metal-free catalysts for a series of electrochemical energy conversions including oxygen reduction and CO Mr Ji Liang is currently a PhD student supervised by Prof. Qiao at Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN) of the University of Queensland. He obtained his Master and Bachelor degrees at Tianjin University (China) in 2010 and 2008 respectively. His current research interests include (i) the metal free catalysts based on carbon materials applied in PEM fuel cells as well as (ii) novel carbon materials for energy conversion/storage applications. reduction reactions ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
| ISSN: | 1754-5692 1754-5706 |
| DOI: | 10.1039/c2ee03479d |