Growth and characterization of self-assembled carbon nitride leaf-like nanostructures

Carbon nitride nanostructures have been created using the novel technique of liquid phase pulsed laser ablation of a graphite target in ammonia solution. For ablation times between 1 and 7 h, 'leaf-shaped' nanostructures are formed by self-assembly of carbon nitride nanorods. With increasing ablation time, the crystallinity of the nanorod building blocks improves, and the length of the nanoleaf structures increases while the width remains constant. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy results confirmed that nitrogen is chemically incorporated into the carbon network. The N–C (sp 2 ) bonding increases with increasing ablation time, whereas the N–C (sp) and N–C (sp 3 ) bonding behaviour is more complex. The optical properties for these leaf-like structures as a function of ablation time are also discussed.