Supporting Information for Bamboo-like Carbon Nitride Nanotubes (C9N5H3): Atomic-Scale Construction, Synthesis and Lithium Battery Applications S1. Experimental details To prepare the C9N5H3 bamboo-like nanostructures, 2mmol cyanuric chloride (C3N3Cl3), 1 mmol ferrocene (Fe(C5H5)2), and 10mmol sodium azide (NaN3) were loaded into a quartz-tube of 20 ml capacity, which was then put into a 65 ml stainless-steel autoclave. Before sealed, 2ml liquid N2 were introduced to this reactor. Then the autoclave was sealed and put into an electronic furnace, and its temperature was increased to 450 oC in 60 min and maintained at 450 oC for 4h. The final product was filtered and washed with dilute HCl, distilled water, and toluene to remove the impurities. Finally, the as-synthesized products were dried under vacuum at 60 ˚C for 3h. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) measurements were performed on a VGESCALAB MKII X-ray photoelectron spectrometer with an exciting source of Mg K= 1253.6 eV. Elemental analysis was taken on an Elementar Vario EL-III elemental analysis instrument. Raman spectra were recorded at room temperature with a LABRAM-HR Confocal Laser MicroRaman Spectrometer. IR absorption spectra were performed with a Nicolet FT-IR-170SX spectrometer in the range of 500~4000 cm-1 at room temperature, in transmission mode in a KBr pellet. The transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images were performed with a Hitachi Model H-800 instrument with a tungsten filament, using an accelerating voltage of 200kV. High-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) images were carried out on a JEOL-2010 TEM at an acceleration voltage of 200 KV. Photoluminescence spectroscopy (PL) was carried out on a Shimadzu RF-5301PC spectrofluorophotometer with a Xe lamp at room temperature. The performance of the sample as cathode was evaluated using a Teflon cell with a lithium metal anode. The cathode was a mixture of bamboo-like carbon nitride 1 nanotubes (BCNNs)/poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) with weight ratio 9/1. The electrolyte was a 1 M LiPF6 in a 1:1 mixture of ethylene carbonate (EC)/diethyl carbonate (DEC), and the separator was Celgard 2320. The cell was assembled in the glovebox filled with highly pure argon gas (O2 and H2O levels < 5 ppm). The galvanostatic charge/discharge experiment was performed between 2.0 and 0.05 V at the different current density of 50mA/g, 100mA/g and 200mA/g. All the Li-ion battery electrodes experiments were carried out using the Land battery system (CT2001A). S2.The construction units of the finite cluster model of carbon nitrides (C9N5H3) bamboo-like structures Figure S2-1. (a) Atomic structure of the graphitic-like C3N4 planar sheet. In this model, the planar sheet formed from triazine rings and nitrogen bridges, each of C atoms is threefold coordinated, while the nitrogens show a two- or threefold 2 coordinations. (b) The proposed atomic structure of the graphitic-like C9N5H3 planar sheet. Note that in order to facilitate us to investigate the proposed model, we simplified the model by substituting the s-triazine ring layer with the benzene ring layer as marked in the yellow rectangle region in (b), instead of the randomly substituting the s-triazine ring with benzene ring in the C3N4 planar sheet. Evidently, it is found that this model agrees well with our experimental results as described in the manuscript and the following supporting information. Note that the dangling bonds for the carbon atoms of the tubes are saturated by hydrogen atoms, similar to the other construction for carbon nanostructures1. Figure S2-2. Careful observation of the atomic structure of the graphitic-like C9N5H3 planar sheet. Based on the calculation of the atom number in the periodic units in this planar sheet, the atom ratio of C, N, and H should be 9, 5, and 3, respectively. Therefore, the proposed planar sheet structure should be formulated as C9N5H3. Moreover, the area marked by the red cycle is the pore in the structure, which is different from that of the graphite structure. Note that the pores could be clearly seen on this tube wall in the as-constructed finite cluster model of C9N5H3 bamboo-like carbon nitride nanotube (S4), which are expected to allow foreign atoms or molecules 3 to intercalate and de-intercalate, for example, Li+ ions, revealing that the as-constructed finite cluster models are expected to possess more advantage in lithium battery applications. Figure S2-3. The proposed common wall of two tubes for the bamboo-like structure (coronene-like carbon nitride segment), where the six carbon atoms in the coronene-like carbon nitride segment are replaced by six nitrogen atoms. And the atoms marked by pink are the connected atoms between the tube wall and the coronene-like carbon nitride segment. S3. The calculation parameters for the proposed finite cluster model of C9H5H3 structures. The geometric optimization of different structures have been probed using the local-orbital density-functional method implemented in the DMol3, package 2 . All-electron calculations are used together with the double numerical plus polarization basis set 3 and the local density approximation functionals PWC 110 was used to obtain all the results reported below. Note that the Scf density convergence is 1.0000 e-5. 4 S4. The construction methods for carbon nitrides (C9N5H3) bamboo-like structure Using the local-orbital density-functional method implemented in the DMol3, package2, we first probe the structural and electronic properties of bamboo-like carbon nitride nanotubes (C9H5H3). Additionally, the coronene-like carbon nitride segment as shown in Figure S2-3, has been chosen as the common wall of two tubes in the construction of bamboo-like structure. The connection between tube wall and the coronene-like carbon nitride segment is linked by sp3 carbon atoms. Note that the dangling bonds for the carbon atoms of the tubes are saturated by hydrogen atoms. According to the different linking ways whether the bridge-nitrogen-atom layer connects to the sp3 hybrid carbon atoms or not, we provide three possible structures in Figure S4-1a, b, and c, with the chemical formula of C150N90H60, C126N66H36, and C126N66H36, respectively. In the structure of C150N90H60 (Figure S4-1a), the bridge-nitrogen-atom layer connects to the sp3 hybrid carbon atoms in the coronene-like carbon nitride segment, while in the two C126N66H36 structures in Figure S4-1b and Figure S4-1c, respectively, the benzene layer connects to the common wall of two tubes. In fact, the C126N66H36 structure in Figure S4-1(c) is originated from the structure in Figure S4-1(b) via rotating 30o along the tube axis keeping the common wall (coronene-like carbon nitride segment) immobile as shown in Figure S4-2. We optimize the geometry structures and calculate the formation energy for these three structures, and it is found that the structure in Figure S4-1a is more stable than that in Figure S4-1b and Figure S4-1c as indicated in Table S4 due to the lower formation energy for the structure in Figure S4-1a. Evidently, elongated along the nanotube axis with the same structure in the proposed structure in Figure S4-1a, the final N/C ratio can reasonably approach the N/C ratio value of 5/9 spontaneously, because the periodic units in the tube wall would be increased keeping the N:C:H ratio of 5:9:3. Thus, the stable structure as shown in Figure S4-1a could be formulated as C9N5H3. Moreover, the carbon nitride structure mentioned in the manuscript is based on the structure in Figure S4-1a. Note that it is to be stressed that the models described throughout this paper are 5 ideal descriptions of the carbon nitrides structures; in other words they must be considered as “first level approximations” of the structure of real materials. Figure S4-1. Atomic structures of different cluster models of carbon nitride structures with the chemical formula of C150N90H60 (a), C126N66H36 (b), and C126N66H36(c) according to different linking way to the common wall of the two tubes (up tube and bottom tube): (a) the bridge-nitrogen-atom layer connects to the sp3 hybrid carbon atoms in the coronene-like carbon nitride segment; (b-c) the benzene-layer connects with the common wall of two tubes. And the structure (c) is originated from that in (b) via rotating 30o along the tube axis keeping the common wall (coronene-like carbon nitride segment) immobile. 6 Figure S4-2. Schematic evolution of the structure from Figure S4-1b to that Figure S4-1c, where the structure in Figure 4c is originated from that in Figure S4-1b rotating 30o along the tube axis keeping the common wall (coronene-like carbon nitride segment) immobile. Table S4. The atomic formation energy based on the fomula of E formation=E total – (n*E C +n*E N). Structure Chemical Formula E formation(au) Figure S4-1a C150N90H60 -93.04 au Figure S4-1b C126N66H36 -71.86 au Figure S4-1c C126N66H36 -70.16 au 7 S5. The calculation on FTIR spectrum for the finite cluster model of carbon nitrides (C9N5H3) planar sheet The typical IR spectrum in Figure 2b further implies the existence of nitrogen in the as-obtained products and shows the fact that the higher absorption in the range of 1000~2000 cm-1 compared with that of the lower nitrogen-doped carbon nanostructures. As is known, a large dynamic charge for states which results from the small energy gap of the states and the conjugated bonding of sp2 sites contributes to IR appearance 4. And the introduction of nitrogen induces an increase and clustering of the sp2 phase and promotes charge fluxes within the molecule and thus higher IR absorption, shown in Figure 2b. The IR strong absorption in Figure 2b shows the broad band of the stretching modes of NH2 or NH groups at 3413 cm-1. The adsorption band centered at 1607 cm-1 is due to the C=N sp2 phase 4, while the absorption band centered at 1397 cm-1 can be attributed to C-N. The peak at 805 cm-1 belongs to s-triazine ring modes 5. The sharp peak at 1607 cm-1 is an indication of high content of nitrogen in the IR adsorption. Note that all the observed group for NH2 or NH, C=N, C-N, and s-triazine ring could be found in the proposed finite cluster model of C9N5H3 structures, confirming the reasonableness for the proposed structure (Figure 1 in the manuscript). Due to the calculation limits for over 300 atoms for the constructed carbon nitrides, we use the semi-empirical AM1 methods6 with the default STO-3G basis. Here we choose the revised factor of the STO-3G basis 0.99 with the Gaussian03 program 7 to simulate the FTIR spectrum and the typical calculation IR peaks and the counterpart experimental results have been summarized in Table S5. And corresponding structural information were also given in Table S2, from which the construction units in the bamboo-like carbon nitrides (C9N5H3) structure can be clearly indexed. That is to say, the FTIR spectrum of the as-obtained products agrees well with the calculated results from the proposed C9N5H3 bamboo-like carbon nitride structures. 8 Table S5. The information summary for the calculated IR data and their experimental IR data for the bamboo-like carbon nitrides structure (C9N5H3). Index Calculation IR data 1 3426.0 cm-1 3413 cm-1 -NH and –NH2 2 2936.4 cm-1 2928 cm-1 C-H 3 1612.0 cm-1 1607 cm-1 C=N 4 1397 cm-1 1397 cm-1 C-N 5 805.4 cm-1 805 cm-1 S-triazine ring 70 Experimental IR data Structural information (b) 10 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 -1 N-H or NH2 3413 20 C-H 2928 30 C=N 1607 40 C-N 1397 50 S-triazine ring 805 Intensity (a.u.) 60 3500 Wavenumber (cm ) Figure 2b in the manuscript FT-IR spectrum of the as-prepared bamboo-like carbon nitride nanotubes (BCNNs). 9 S6. The calculation on UV-Vis spectrum for carbon nitrides (C9N5H3) planar sheet Due to the calculation limits for over 300 atoms for the constructed carbon nitrides, we use the semi-empirical AM1 methods 6 with the default STO-3G basis. Here we choose the revised factor of the STO-3G basis 0.99 with the Gaussian03 program 7 to simulate the UV-Vis spectrum. It is found that the strongest peak in the calculation results is 234 nm, which is approaching the experimental value for 226 nm as shown in Figure S6. In a word, the UV-Vis spectrum of as-obtained products, which is carried out on an UV-Vis spectrophotometer (UV-240) from a Xe lamp at room temperature, agree well with the calculation results of the proposed C9N5H3 bamboo-like carbon nitride structures. Absorption 1.05 226 nm 1.00 0.95 0.90 0.85 220 240 260 280 300 320 340 360 380 400 Wavelength (nm) Figure S6. The UV-Vis spectrum for the as-obtained carbon nitride products, which is carried out on an UV-Vis spectrophotometer (UV-240) from a Xe lamp at room temperature. S7. The formation mechanism for the C9N5H3 carbon nitride bamboo-like nanotubes The formation mechanism for the as-obtained carbon nitride nanostructures, is preferably based on the vapour-liquid-solid (VLS) model proposed for the carbon necklaces8, although the low temperature adopted (the reaction temperature of 450 oC here) is significantly lower than the iron melting temperature. Moreover, the evidence for VLS also arises from the clearly shown iron particle at the tip of carbon nitride nanotubes as shown in Figure S7 which is similar to a drop of mercury in a glass capillary, indicating that it is a quasi-liquid state during reaction. That is to say, the catalytic particle is iron, and the newly formed carbon nitrides are preferentially adsorbed at its surface and dissolved into the liquid metal phase, leading to a 10 supersaturation of carbon nitrides. Once expulsed for the iron and carbon nitrides, carbon nitrides then crystallizes at the surface of particles and forms graphene sheets around the catalytic particles. In this case, it is well known that the formation of the first carbon nitride layer defines a volume for the particle, similar to the polyaromatic layer9. After formation of several carbon nitride layers, the catalytic particle is trapped inside a smaller volume. And with the enough intensity of compression, the catalytic particle is expulsed from the bell-like carbon nitride-based structure and restarts the process. Finally, the bamboo-like morphology can be formed and the whole process can be schematically described in Figure S7. The further evidence for the internal growth scenario can be shown in Figure S7c, where the internal carbon nitride based sheets of the previous nano-bell are linked by the end to the head of the next one and are surrounding the shells of the following bell. In the suggested mechanism, the bamboo-like carbon nitride nanotubes were formed by molding the movement of metal tip at regularly linear intervals over similar distances, similar to the carbon counterpart nanostructures10. This can only be explained by supposing that the metal is in a quasi-liquid state with high surface energy and poor wetting ability towards carbon nitride. However, as is known, iron has a body-centered cubic (BCC) crystal structure and its melting point is 1538 oC, and the lowest stable and metastable eutectoid temperature in the iron-carbon system is 738 oC and 727oC, respectively11. Thus, it is hard to believe that the catalyst particles of iron with a diameter of >50nm were in the liquid state at the synthetic temperature (450 oC), which is even significantly lower than the reaction temperature for the mostly reported carbon bamboo-like with/without nitrogen-doping 8-10 . The existence of the metal in a quasi-liquid state at the low temperature of 450 oC can be attributed to the following considerations: i) The size effect of the metal at the nanometer level and the interfacial effect between nanocarbon nitride and nanometal. As is known, even far below the melting temperature, particles of small sizes (sub-micrometer to a few micrometer in diameter) can behave like in the liquid state12, for example, the Ag crystallites on graphite or amorphous carbon film move randomly like liquid droplets below the melting temperature, even though diffraction patterns or 11 Moiré patterns show the Ag islands and crystallites are in solid state13. Evidently, the size effect for the catalytic metals has been introduced to explain the formation of carbon nanotubes in the previous reports14. ii) The heat generated in the process by the exothermicity of salt formation can also leads to the elevated system temperature in the sealed autoclave system. Here, the salt NaCl can be formed with the produce of enough energy in the reaction process as shown in Figure S7 (1). Therefore, based on the above considerations, the freshly produced iron nanoparticles from ferrocene molecules in the reaction process are also expected to be liquid-like property on the inner wall of the carbon nitride nanostructures. 12 Figure S7. (a) The proposed mechanism of the formation of bamboo-like carbon nitride nanotubes (BCNNs): (1) The reaction of cyanuric chloride (C3N3Cl3) and sodium azide (NaN3) provides the s-triazine ring, activated nitrogen atoms, as well as the energy generated in the process by the exothermicity of salt formation. (2) The decomposition of ferrocene (Fe(C5H5)2 produces the catalytic particles and the free carbon atoms and these atoms could then form hexagonal carbon feedblocks. (3) Carbon nitride sheets formed from the construction of benezene-ring units, activated nitrogen and S-triazine ring. (4) Carbon nitride sheets formed around the catalytic particles, and after formation of several carbon nitride layers, the catalytic nanoparticle is trapped inside a smaller volume. (5) With the enough intensity of compression, the cartalytic particle is expulsed from the bell-like carbon nitride-based structure and restarts the process. (6) Finally, the bamboo-like carbon nitride nanotubes (BCNNs) can be formed through the named vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) 13 mechanism. (b) The corresponding EDS spectrum for the end of a bamboo-like nanotubes. (c) The magnified HRTEM image of an isolated bamboo-like nanotubes for the junction region. S8. The experimental conditions for the formation of C9N5H3 carbon nitrides bamboo-like structures Some experimental conditions play crucial roles in the formation of bamboo-like carbon nitrides, which is also provide the auxiliary evidence for the above-mentioned mechanism. (1) ferrocene (Fe(C5H5)2) was found to be indispensable for the production of bamboo-like morphology. Without the addition of ferrocene (Fe(C5H5)2) while at the same reaction conditions, the reaction of cyanuric chloride (C3N3Cl3) and NaN3 can only result in the vessel-like products as shown in Figure S8a-b, where their morphology and the reaction mechanism can be reasonably thought to be similar to those for the reaction of CCl4 and NaN3 at 450 oC15. Since the catalytic iron nanoparticles are produced from the ferrocene molecules, there was no iron particles was included in the reaction without the addition of ferrocene molecules. That is to say, there are no one-dimensional product formed without the catalytic iron particles, which then provides an auxiliary evidence for the role of catalytic iron nanoparticles for the growth of one-dimensional bamboo-like morphology. (2) Sodium azide played important roles in providing both a rich-nitrogen system and the exothermicity of salt formation in the reaction process. Without the addition of NaN3 while remaining the same experimental parameters, the nitrogen concentration in the products decreased strongly and there are only nanotubes can be obtained instead of the bamboo-like morphology (Figure S8c). This phenomenon is similar to the case for carbon nanostructures in the previous report, where nanotubes can be obtained at the low reaction temperature of 1000~1300 oC while necklace-like morphology at the higher reaction temperature of 1700~2400 o 17 C . Similarly, the appearance of tube morphology in this case might be resulted from the lack of enough energy produced in the reaction systems and resulted in the relative lower-temperature reaction environment, revealing the essence of exothermicity effects for the formation of bamboo-like morphology. (3) Cyanuric chloride (C3N3Cl3) played an important role, 14 acting as carbon and nitrogen sources. Without the addtion of C3N3Cl3, only irregular particles can be obtained as seen in Figure S8d. (4) The reaction temperature appears to be the key parameter. At the temperature less than 330 oC, ferrocene (Fe(C5H5)2) can not be initiated in the reaction; while at temperatures >700 oC, nitrogen concentration in the product decreased significantly. Figure S8. TEM images (a-b) of the products obtained by the reaction of cyanuric chloride (C3N3Cl3) and sodium azide (NaN3) at the same reaction condition for BCNNs. TEM image (c) of the products obtained by ferrocene (Fe(C5H5)2) and cyanuric chloride (C3N3Cl3), while TEM image (d) is for the products obtained by the reaction of ferrocene (Fe(C5H5)2) and sodium azide (NaN3). 15 S9. The PL study on the C9N5H3 carbon nitrides bamboo-like structures Photoluminescence spectroscopy (PL) was carried out on a Shimadzu RF-5301PC spectrofluorophotometer with a Xe lamp at room temperature. The typical photoluminescence spectrum of the synthesized Bamboo-like carbon nitride nanotubes (BCNN) shows a broad peak around at 400nm (Figure S9a), which is close to the band gap emission16. Moreover, it is interesting that PL intensity for the products approaching C9N5H3 show the intensity advantage for those of our previous reported nitrogen-doped carbon nanostructures with the different nitrogen concentration of [N]/[C]=0.33 (Figure S9b), [N]/[C]=0.20 (Figure S9c), and [N]/[C]=0.09 (Figure S9d) 15 , respectively. And PL intensity decrease as shown in Figure S9a-d as the nitrogen content decrease: there is a broad and clear peak in Figure S9a, while only a feeble hump peak in Figure S9b. In Figure S9c, no obvious peak can be found, as well as that of the products of [N]/[C] ≤0.09 (Figure S9d). Thus, these results provide another fine case that the PL intensity is sensitive to nitrogen concentration and the intensity feature is mostly due to the fact that the higher nitrogen concentration for the carbon nitride, the stronger PL intensity. 700 Intensity (a.u.) 600 500 397nm (a) For the as-obtained BCNNs approaching C9N5H3 structure 400 [N]/[C]=0.33 (b) In Ref. 15 300 200 (c) 100 [N]/[C]=0.20 In Ref. 15 (d) [N]/[C]=0.09 In Ref. 15 0 400 450 500 Wavelength (nm) 550 Figure S9. The PL spectra of the as-prepared BCNNs samples (a); and the comparison PL spectra in Ref. 15 for the different nitrogen concentration of [N]/[C]=0.33 (b), [N]/[C]=0.20 (c), and [N]/[C]=0.09 (d). 16 Reference in the supporting information 1 C. Lee, T. Lee, J. Park, Chem. Phys. Lett. 323, 560 (2000,). 2 (a) Delley, B.; J. Chem. Phys. 92, 508(1990); (b) Delley, B. J. Chem. 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