Chemical Cleavage of Layered Carbon Nitride with Enhanced Photoluminescent Performances and Photoconduction

TLDR: Bulk polymeric carbon nitride could be utilized as a layered precursor to preparecarbon nitride nanostructures such as nanorods, nanoleaves and quantum dots by chemical tailoring to open up an avenue for doped nanocarbon in developing photoelectrical devices and sensors.

Abstract: Graphene quantum dots (GQDs) and carbon dots (C-dots) have various alluring properties and potential applications, but they are often limited by unsatisfied optical performance such as low quantum yield, ambiguous fluorescence emission mechanism, and narrow emission wavelength Herein, we report that bulk polymeric carbon nitride could be utilized as a layered precursor to prepare carbon nitride nanostructures such as nanorods, nanoleaves and quantum dots by chemical tailoring As doped carbon materials, these carbon nitride nanostructures not only intrinsically emitted UV lights but also well inherited the explicit photoluminescence mechanism of the bulk pristine precursor, both of which were rarely reported for GQDs and C-dots Especially, carbon nitride quantum dots (CNQDs) had a photoluminescence quantum yield (QY) up to 46%, among the highest QY for metal-free quantum dots so far As examples, the CNQDs were utilized as a photoluminescence probe for rapid detection of Fe3+ with a detection limit of 1