From dots to tubes - the reversed scenario of bottom-up external-catalyst-free synthesis of N-doped carbon nanotubes.

We present a novel external-catalyst-free route for the synthesis of N-doped carbon nanotubes (N-CNTs) from amino-acid-derived carbon dots (CDs) as sustainable resources. N-CNTs (∼4-26 at% of N) were comprehensively characterized by complementary techniques while the synthetic strategy emerges as an important alternative and, simultaneously, a simply-scalable approach.