Proceedings of MATSUS Spring 2025 Conference (MATSUSSpring25)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29363/nanoge.matsusspring.2025.056
Publication date: 16th December 2024
The interest in covalent materials has been rising recently, and structures with specifically designed properties and chemical features have widened the application spectrum of this class of materials.[1] Exemplarily, the
introduction of lightweight heteroatoms, such as nitrogen, into a sp2-bonded carbon expands the spectrum of possibilities and enables tailoring the electronic and optical properties of carbon materials. Among those, carbon nitride materials, a class of 2D covalent semiconductor with ideal formula C3N4, have recently attracted much attention especially in photocatalysis. However, up to now, their application as thin films was hindered due to the low homogeneity of the coatings available. Recently, we developed an innovative method to produce carbon nitride thin films with tunable thickness by means of chemical vapor deposition. The CVD method enables to deposit carbon nitride thin film with tunable thickness over large substrates and regardless their shape, from flat silicon wafers to fibers and even bulky irregular materials.The as prepared thin films are highly stable, homogeneous, and flat with a very high refractive index, even in the range of diamond.[2,3] The high homogeneity and conformal deposition of the carbon nitride thin films prepared enabled to use them to develop innovative batch and microfluidic photoreactors, by coating the reactors’ walls, achieving high selectivity and conversion in shorter time, and enabling overcoming problems typically associated with the use of bulk materials.[4,5] Furthermore, the utilization of carbon nitride thin films in photocatalysis enabled the development of in-operando spectroscopic techniques, such as atmospheric pressure-XPS and -XAS, combined with TOF-MS under controlled precursor vapor pressure and using a solar simulator as light stimulus. This revealed fundamental mechanistic insights and the critical role of surface interactions in key reactions, such as water splitting. The utilization of covalent semiconductor thin films, such as carbon nitrides, is still in its infancy, however, it sets the premises for significant improvements in energy conversion, energy storage, selective ion separation, and beyond.
The author thanks the Max Planck Society, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, SPP 2370), and the European Union′s Horizon research and innovation program (CATART, grant agreement number 101046836) for financial support.
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