Biomimetic fabrication of g-C3N4/TiO2 nanosheets with enhanced photocatalytic activity toward organic pollutant degradation.

A facile and efficient approach was first developed to prepare g-C 3 N 4 /TiO 2 nanocomposites by combining the arginine-enabled biomimetic mineralization of TiO 2 with the thermal oxidation etching of bulk g-C 3 N 4 . The resultant g-C 3 N 4 /TiO 2 nanocomposites exhibit a well-defined morphology, in which TiO 2 nanoparticles about 5.5 nm in diameter are uniformly distributed on the g-C 3 N 4 nanosheet. They exhibit higher degradation efficiency for Rhodamine B (RhB) than TiO 2 , g-C 3 N 4 and their mixture under visible light and simulated-sunlight irradiation. In all the as-prepared samples, the g-C 3 N 4 /TiO 2 nanosheet with 25.9 wt% of g-C 3 N 4 exhibits the highest photocatalytic efficiency, which can degrade almost all RhB under simulated-sunlight irradiation within 50 min. The synergistic effect between TiO 2 and g-C 3 N 4 plays an important role for the enhanced photocatalytic activity of g-C 3 N 4 /TiO 2 nanosheets. This kind of sheet-like nanocomposites may find the potential application for the photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]