Carrier engineering of carbon nitride boosts visible-light photocatalytic hydrogen evolution

Carbon nitride, as one of the metal-free photocatalysts, has aroused wide attention due to its low cost, easy preparation, and excellent optical response. However, challenges of the high recombination rate of electron-hole pair hindered their potential applications. Here, boron-doped carbon nitride nanotubes were designed and prepared by a simple hydrothermal and calcination route. Compared with the bulk carbon nitride, the control strategy forms the ordered nanotube structure, which greatly improved their specific surface area, exposed more active sites, and enhanced the graphitization degree. The transient fluorescence lifetime of tubular carbon nitride is twice as long as that of pure carbon nitride. Furthermore, boron doping carbon nitride nanotubes exhibited a 1.5-fold increase in a lifetime over tubular carbon nitride, which acts a synergistic role with nanotube architecture to further increases the carrier concentration and hinder the recombination of photogenerated electron-hole. Under the irradiation of visible light, the amount of hydrogen evolution of the optimum photocatalyst has achieved 22.1 mmol g−1 h−1, which was 64 times that of the bulk carbon nitride and exhibited excellent stability. This work provides a promising strategy for the development of non-metallic doped carbon nitride nanotube photocatalysts for hydrogen evolution.