Carbon nanoarchitectures by design: pre-organizing squaric acid with urea

The synthesis of carbon nanoarchitectures from pre-organized precursor complexes with appropriate bonding patterns, here squaric acid and urea, is described. It is shown that depending on the precursor ratio, different crystal morphologies are formed, which can be transformed into nitrogen-containing carbons with either lamellar or hollow tubelike morphology. It is noted that despite the very different architecture, the composition of the final carbons is always close to a 'C2N' stoichiometry. Copyright (C) 2016 Curtin University of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.