Implanting pyrazine ring into g-C3N4 for accelerating photocatalytic hydrogen evolution

It is of great significance to develop an efficient and stable photocatalyst for the photocatalytic decomposition of water to produce hydrogen. Within this paper, an effective and simple strategy was adopted to introduce pyrazine ring into graphite-like carbon nitride framework to realize efficient and stable hydrogen production process. After evaluation, the hydrogen production efficiency of the modified semiconductor material is 3.05 folds higher than the unmodified graphite-like phase carbon nitride, and an excellent stability performance was also achieved. It is proved that the light absorption ability of doped semiconductor composite nanomaterials was enhanced markedly by introducing 2-aminopyrazine into the carbon nitride structure. Meanwhile, the segregation efficiency of photo-induced carriers was obviously accelerated because the amino groups can work as hole trapping agents. Additionally, the introduced amino groups own Lewis alkalinity, which is in favour of the photoreduction. This work expands a new perspective of stable photocatalysts in the water split to produce hydrogen.