Carbon Nanosheets by Morphology-Retained Carbonization of Two-Dimensional Assembled Anisotropic Carbon Nanorings

Two-dimensional (2D) carbon nanomaterials possessing promising physical and chemical properties find applications in high-performance energy storage devices and catalysts. However, large-scale fabrication of 2D carbon nanostructures is based on a few specific carbon templates or precursors and poses a formidable challenge. Now a new bottom-up method for carbon nanosheet fabrication using a newly designed anisotropic carbon nanoring molecule, CPPhen, is presented. CPPhen was self-assembled at a dynamic air-water interface with a vortex motion to afford molecular nanosheets, which were then carbonized under inert gas flow. Their nanosheet morphologies were retained after carbonization, which has never been seen for low-molecular weight compounds. Furthermore, adding pyridine as a nitrogen dopant in the self-assembly step successfully afforded nitrogen-doped carbon nanosheets containing mainly pyridinic nitrogen species.