A highly efficient g-CN/SiO heterojunction: the role of SiO in the enhancement of visible light photocatalytic activity.

SiO, an insulator, hardly has any photocatalytic acitivity due to its intrinsic property, and it is generally used as a hard template to increase the surface area of catalysts. However, in this work, we found that the surface state of the insulator SiO can promote the migration of photogenerated charge carriers, leading to the enhancement of the photooxidation ability of graphitic carbon nitride (g-CN). A one-pot calcination method was employed to prepare g-CN/SiO composites using melamine and SiO as precursors.