Synthesis and characterization of three-dimensional graphene foams by chemical vapor deposition

As a three-dimensional porous structure made of two-dimensional graphene building blocks, graphene foam, has gained enormous attention in recent years. Such graphene foam integrates graphene sheets into macroscopic structures meanwhile inheriting most of the fascinating intrinsic properties of graphene. Together with its ultralow density, high porosity and flexibility, graphene foam has been proposed in many applications, such as supercapacitors, microwave shielding, electrochemical sensing and lithium-ion batteries. In this paper, three-dimensional graphene foams were synthesized by low pressure chemical vapor deposition. The obtained graphene foams were characterized by scanning electron microscopy and Raman spectroscopy. The results show that nickel foam surface was fully covered by graphene. The Raman spectra show that most graphene were multilayer, but monolayer and bilayer graphene were also found in some areas. In addition to this, it was also found that the synthesized graphene has very small D peak, indicating high quality of the synthesized graphene.