Synthesis of polymer gel composite Ag/ <scp>PCN</scp> for enhanced photocatalytic degradation performance

Abstract In this paper, silver‐loaded Ag/P‐C 3 N 4 (Ag/PCN) was prepared by simple calcination, sol–gel, and hydrothermal synthesis methods. The morphological structures and photo‐electro‐chemical properties of the photocatalysts were characterized, and the results show that silver‐loaded P‐C 3 N 4 (PCN) can effectively modify the energy band structure to enhance light absorption and greatly increase the conductivity to accelerate charge transfer and photo‐generated carrier separation. The photocatalytic degradation of the organic pollutant MO showed that Ag/PCN achieved a 69.8% degradation rate in 120 min, which was 1.76 times higher than the pure PCN degradation rate (39.6%) and greatly enhanced the catalytic performance. The kinetic constant of catalyzed degradation by Ag/PCN (0.01319 min −1 ) was 3.26 times higher than that of PCN (0.00405 min −1 ). The enhanced catalytic performance is attributed to the fact that Ag doping can act as an electron‐trapping agent to slow down the complexation of photogenerated electrons and holes, which further promotes the photoreduction performance of the photocatalytic polymer composites. This suggests that silver doping in PCN has the potential for the preparation of high‐performance photocatalysts for organic pollutant removal.