Exploring recent advances in silver halides and graphitic carbon nitride-based photocatalyst for energy and environmental applications

Engineering visible light active photocatalytic systems for renewable energy production and environmental remediation has always been a promising technology to counter overall energy demands and pollution challenges. As a fascinating conjugated polymer graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) has been developed as a hotspot in the research field as a metal-free semiconducting material with the appealing band gap of 2.7 eV. Recently, g-C3N4 has gained tremendous interest in photocatalytic wastewater abatement as well as for hydrogen (H2) generation, carbon dioxide (CO2) reduction, and pollutant degradation, under exposure to visible light. Plasmonic silver halides (AgX) such as AgCl, AgBr, and AgI as plasmonic photocatalyst have received immense research interest owing to their escalating photocatalytic efficacy and strong surface plasmon resonance effect (SPR). AgX is the photosensitive, broad bandgap semiconducting materials with effectual antimicrobial properties. This review summarizes the heterostructure of carbonaceous g-C3N4 with plasmonic AgX, to reduce the recombination of photo-generated charge carriers, thus enhancing the natural light absorption. g-C3N4 grafted AgX nanoarchitectures can be utilized for several potential applications, for instance, overall water splitting (OWS), CO2 conversion to hydrocarbon fuels, pollutant exclusion, and antibacterial disinfection. This review focuses on the evolution of g-C3N4 as well as AgX, facile, and synthetic routes for fabrication of g-C3N4 tailored AgX, construction of nano-junctions (AgX/g-C3N4) with various photocatalytic applications. Finally, we provided a viewpoint of current hassles and some perceptions of novel trends in this exciting as well as developing research arena.