Applying thermo-destabilization of microemulsions as a new method for co-catalyst loading on mesoporous polymeric carbon nitride – towards large scale applications

Abstract

Photocatalytic water reduction using polymeric carbon nitride is an emerging research area, but other issues like the co-catalyst loading and the choice of sacrificial agents as hole scavengers have received very little attention in the literature. We addressed the above issues by employing microemulsion based ex situ co-catalyst loading on porous carbon nitrides as a superior method with about 40% higher HER activity compared to the usual in situ co-catalyst loading used in the majority of previous studies. In addition, for the first time, we introduced a large scale 1 m² reactor for H₂ production with 80 mL h⁻¹ using this ex situ Pt loaded on porous carbon nitrides under natural sunlight conditions.