Femtosecond laser irradiation as a novel method for nanosheet growth and defect generation in g-C3N4

Among the many recently developed photo-catalytic materials, graphitic carbon nitride (gC 3 N 4) shows great promise as a catalytic material for water splitting, hydrogen generation, and related catalytic applications. Herein, synthesized bulk gC 3 N 4 is simply irradiated under a 35 fs pulse at mixed photon energies (800 nm and its second harmonic). gC 3 N 4 was synthesized from melamine following a facile thermal polymerization procedure. The prepared material was introduced, in an aqueous environment, to the femtosecond laser for various lengths of time. The treated material demonstrates a significant increase in surface area, relative to the untreated samples, indicating that irradiation is a successful method for exfoliation. The subsequent characterization reveals that the mixed irradiation process drives significant defect generation and sheet growth, which is not seen under 800 nm irradiation. Extended …