Mo-doped carbon nitride homojunction to promote oxygen activation for enhanced photocatalytic performance

Oxygen as an economic and ubiquitous oxidant plays a significant role in catalysis environmental remediation. However, the high thermodynamic stability of O2 limits the practical application. Herein, we reported a novel Mo doped carbon nitride (Mo-CN/g-CN) homojunction via the in-situ growth strategy. The strong interaction between Mo-CN and g-C3N4 enhanced visible-light response and photogenerated electrons and holes pairs separation, which were beneficial for photocatalytic activity. Importantly, theoretical calculation and experiments confirmed that Mo atoms on the surface of Mo-CN/g-CN could provide abundant electrons to the adsorbed O2 to promote the generation of O2−, thus enhancing the photocatalytic performance. Consequently, the obtained Mo-CN/g-CN reveals excellent photocatalytic NO removal activity, demonstrating its promise for air purification. This current work gives a novel insight for O2 activation in the application of photocatalytic environmental remediation.