For students

Supervisor: dr hab. Włodzimierz Miśta

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Description:

Photocatalytic water splitting for hydrogen production, which directly enables the efficient conversion of solar energy into hydrogen energy, represents one of the ideal strategies to address the global energy crisis. Graphite carbon nitride (g-C₃N₄) has emerged as a promising organic semiconductor photocatalyst, due to its stable chemical properties, tuneable structure, cost-effective raw materials, straightforward synthesis, and suitable band edge positions.

Despite these advantageous properties, the efficiency of g-C₃N₄ for hydrogen production is hindered by its small specific surface area, limited visible light absorption, high recombination rate of photogenerated carriers, ineffective adsorption of the reacting species and inadequate active sites.

Several modification strategies have been developed to improve the photocatalytic hydrogen production efficiency of g-C₃N₄. These include:

morphology control, construction of heterogeneous structures, cocatalyst loading, functional group modification, and defect engineering.

The goal of thesis is hierarchical porous metal-modified graphitic carbon nitride with interconnected macro-, meso-, and micropores with metal active sites and nanocarbon components. This design provides a high specific surface area, enhances light absorption, shortens charge diffusion paths, and accelerates mass transfer for superior photocatalytic and catalytic performance (water splitting, CO2 reduction, environmental protection).

The obtained materials will be in-depth characterized using advanced techniques, including powder X-ray diffraction, transmission and scanning electron microscopy, photoelectron spectroscopy, infrared spectroscopy (DRIFT-MS), Raman spectroscopy, and gas adsorption-based methods (texture analysis), TG-DTA and thermo-programmed analysis (TPR, TPO, TPD).