Surface Defect Healing in Annealing from Nanoporous Carbons to Nanoporous Graphenes

Nanoporous graphene (NPG) materials have the pronounced electrochemical stability of the seamless graphene structures developed over the 3D space. We revisited the Raman spectra of nanoporous carbons (NPCs) synthesized using θ- /γ-Al2O3 templates and NPGs converted from NPCs by annealing at 1800 ºC to identify the type and density of defects. We found that both the NPCs and NPGs mostly consist of single-layered graphene with a few single vacancies and Stone‒Wales defects. The density of vacancy defect per hexagon in the graphene is estimated to be 10‒2 for NPCs, while the annealing reduced the value to 10‒3 for NPGs, supporting the outstanding stability of the novel materials.