@article{4814441843434d4b831925790ba6a2e9,
title = "Porous nanographene formation on γ-alumina nanoparticles via transition-metal-free methane activation",
abstract = "γ-Al2O3 nanoparticles promote pyrolytic carbon deposition of CH4 at temperatures higher than 800 °C to give single-walled nanoporous graphene (NPG) materials without the need for transition metals as reaction centers. To accelerate the development of efficient reactions for NPG synthesis, we have investigated early-stage CH4 activation for NPG formation on γ-Al2O3 nanoparticles via reaction kinetics and surface analysis. The formation of NPG was promoted at oxygen vacancies on (100) surfaces of γ-Al2O3 nanoparticles following surface activation by CH4. The kinetic analysis was well corroborated by a computational study using density functional theory. Surface defects generated as a result of surface activation by CH4 make it kinetically feasible to obtain single-layered NPG, demonstrating the importance of precise control of oxygen vacancies for carbon growth.",
author = "Masanori Yamamoto and Qi Zhao and Shunsuke Goto and Yu Gu and Takaaki Toriyama and Tomokazu Yamamoto and Hirotomo Nishihara and Alex Aziz and Rachel Crespo-Otero and {Di Tommaso}, Devis and Masazumi Tamura and Keiichi Tomishige and Takashi Kyotani and Kaoru Yamazaki",
note = "Funding Information: This work was supported by Grants-in-Aid (19K15281 and 19H00913) from JSPS, the Ebara-Hatakeyama Memorial Foundation, and Ensemble Grant for Early Career Researchers at Tohoku University. Q. Z. thanks China Scholarship Council for financial support. We thank Tohoku University Molecule and Material Synthesis Platform in the Nanotechnology Platform Project for NMR analysis operated by Mr S. Yoshida at Tohoku University, Japan. The authors acknowledge the kind support of Prof. Dr M. Kakihana and Prof. Dr H. Kato in performing Raman spectroscopy. The authors thank Sumitomo Chemical Co. Ltd for kindly supplying alumina nanoparticles. We thank Prof. Dr A. Muramatsu (Tohoku University), Dr T. Irisawa (Nagoya University), Dr R. Osuga (Tohoku University), and Prof. Dr J. N. Kondo (Tokyo Institute of Technology) for helpful discussions. K. Y. is grateful for the financial support from Building of Consortia for the Development of Human Resources in Science and Technology funded by MEXT and Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology of the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST CREST, Grant No. JPMJCR16P3). This research utilized Queen Mary's Apocrita HPC facility, supported by QMUL ITS Research. We are grateful to the UK Materials and Molecular Modeling Hub for computational resources, which were partially funded by EPSRC (EP/P020194/1 and EP/T022213/1). Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2022 The Royal Society of Chemistry",
year = "2022",
month = feb,
day = "22",
doi = "10.1039/d1sc06578e",
language = "English",
volume = "13",
pages = "3140--3146",
journal = "Chemical Science",
issn = "2041-6520",
publisher = "Royal Society of Chemistry",
number = "11",
}