Graphitic carbon nitride: Effects of various precursors on the structural, morphological and electrochemical sensing properties

Graphitic carbon nitride (g-C₃N₄) has been discovered very long ago, in the 1830s. g-C₃N₄, an analogue of graphene, has been of great interest due to the strong electron donor nature of nitrogen present in g-C₃N₄, which is absent in graphene. Though studies have shown that g-C₃N₄ can be used as an electrochemical sensing platform for electrochemical study of H₂O₂, glucose, mercuric ions, nitrobenzene and reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH), few studies have been conducted to investigate the electrochemical behaviours of g-C₃N₄ produced by various precursors (bulk condensation pyrolysis of nitrogen-rich precursors): trithiocyanuric acid (C₃N₄-TC), triazinetrihydrazine (C₃N₄-TH), cyanuric acid (C₃N₄-CA), cyanuric chloride (C₃N₄-CC), dicyandiamide (C₃N₄-DD) and melamine (C₃N₄-ME) on important biomarkers: ascorbic acid, dopamine, uric acid and adenine and to observe any enhanced performance over glassy carbon (GC). In this work, the performance of g-C₃N₄ materials on the electrochemical sensing of biomarkers is analysed with cyclic voltammetry and differential pulse voltammetry techniques. Among the g-C₃N₄ materials tested, C₃N₄-TC and C₃N₄-CA surfaces exhibited lower over-potentials for the electrochemical sensing of the biomarkers as compared to GC. In addition, these two surfaces showed great sensitivity and good linearity for the biomarkers tested. This work provides a good understanding of the electrochemical properties of g-C-3 N-4 materials synthesized from various precursors as well as the effectiveness of the g-C-3 N-4 materials as electrochemical sensing platform. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.