Photocatalytic Hydrogen, Peroxide, and Pollutant Removal Using Carbon Nitrides and COFs
This research community focuses on designing light-absorbing materials, primarily graphitic carbon nitride and covalent organic frameworks, to drive chemical reactions using visible light. The work targets three main applications: producing hydrogen gas, synthesizing hydrogen peroxide from water and oxygen, and degrading organic pollutants in water.
The core materials are graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) and covalent organic frameworks (COFs), often combined with other semiconductors to form S-scheme heterojunctions. These structures are engineered to improve charge separation and transfer, which are critical for efficient photocatalysis. The specific reactions studied include the reduction of protons to hydrogen, the reduction of oxygen to hydrogen peroxide, and the degradation of organic contaminants such as antibiotics. The methods involve synthesizing these porous, organic-rich structures and optimizing their interfaces to enhance their ability to split water or reduce carbon dioxide under visible light illumination.
The community is most prominent in research tracked for Carbon, where it represents 0.8% of all carbon research and accounts for 6,975 papers. It is also a significant portion of Hydrogen research, comprising 1.0% of that element's tracked literature with 6,147 papers, and Oxygen research, where it makes up 0.8% of the total with 4,597 papers.
The community comprises 17,855 papers, with the highest publication volumes in Chemical Engineering Journal, Applied Catalysis B: Environmental, and International Journal of Hydrogen Energy. Recent work continues to focus on refining S-scheme heterojunctions and covalent organic frameworks to improve the efficiency of hydrogen evolution and hydrogen peroxide photosynthesis, with specific attention to interfacial charge transfer mechanisms and the removal of antibiotic contaminants.