Graphitic carbon nitride (g-CN) as an efficient metal-free Fenton-like catalyst for degrading organic pollutants: the overlooked non-photocatalytic activity.

Graphitic carbon nitride (g-CN) has attracted a large amount of research, mainly being used as a photocatalyst, but its Fenton-like catalytic performance has been overlooked. In this paper, the dark Fenton-like catalytic performance of g-CN was evaluated by degrading rhodamine B over a wide pH range. The results showed that the g-CN, which was synthesized by conventional urea pyrolysis without any modification, was an efficient metal-free heterogeneous Fenton-like catalyst. The highest activity occurred under a weakly alkaline condition of about pH 10. The experiment of catalyst recycling indicated that g-CN had long-term stability. The reactive oxidizing species of HO·, generated by the g-CN activating HO, was identified by EPR and further supported by a scavenging experiment of HO· using isopropanol as the scavenger. The HNO oxidation of g-CN resulted in catalytic deactivation, implying the catalytic activity originated from the surface reduced groups of g-CN. The structure of synthesized g-CN before and after the HNO oxidation was characterized by X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and a possible catalytic mechanism was proposed.