Multi-heteroatom-doping promotes molecular oxygen activation on polymeric carbon nitride for simultaneous generation of H 2 O 2 and degradation of oxcarbazepine.

Simultaneously realizing the efficient generation of H 2 O 2 and degradation of pollutants is of great significance for environmental remediation. However, most polymeric semiconductors only show moderate performance in molecular oxygen (O 2 ) activation due to the sluggish electron-hole pair dissociation and charge transfer dynamics. Herein, we develop a simple thermal shrinkage strategy to construct multi-heteroatom-doped polymeric carbon nitride (K, P, O-CN x ). The resultant K, P, O-CN x not only improves the separation efficiency of charge carriers, but also improves the adsorption/activation capacity of O 2 . K, P, O-CN x significantly increases the production of H 2 O 2 and the degradation activity of oxcarbazepine (OXC) under visible light. K, P, O-CN 5 shows a high H 2 O 2 production rate (1858 μM h -1 g -1 ) in water under visible light, far surpassing that of pure PCN. The apparent rate constant for OXC degradation by K, P, O-CN 5 increases to 0.0491 min -1 , which is 8.47 times that of PCN. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations show that the adsorption energy of O 2 near phosphorus atoms in K, P, O-CN x is the highest. This work provides a new idea for the efficient degradation of pollutants and generation of H 2 O 2 at the same time.