To investigate whether the removal of pre-existing functional groups before quinone grafting would improve the cycling stability of the material, BP-1300 was annealed under argon gas at 800 °C. SEM-EDX measurements showed a large decrease in oxygen content after thermal annealing (BP-1300: 7.3 ± 0.8 ABP: 1.8 ± 0.1 wt.%) which indicates a loss of oxygencontaining surface groups (S9.1, Table .1). Annealed BP-1300 (ABP) further showed an 80.6% increase in BET surface area compared to BP-1300, indicating functional groups blocking the carbon surface were removed by annealing (Figure ). After anthraquinone was grafted, an increase in oxygen content was attributed to the successful grafting of anthraquinone, similar to the previous three carbon materials above. Moreover, the nitrogen gas sorption results showed a similar decrease in surface area to f-BP-1300 of 80.3% (Figure ). The pore size distribution showed a loss of pore volume across the range of pore widths particularly in the microporous region (< 2 nm) with the distribution shifting to larger pore width (Figure .1). This suggests quinones are grafting in both micropores as well as mesopores. CV experiments of u-ABP (Figure .1) showed a higher electrochemical capacity than u-BP-1300 (37.0 ± 3.9 mAh g -1 compared to 31.3 ± 3.9 mAh g -1 at 1 mV s -1 ). This can be rationalized by the increase in surface area after annealing, allowing more double-layer capacitance when surface groups are removed. CV experiments of functionalized ABP (f-ABP, Figure ) show two well-defined redox peaks attributed to anthraquinone at -1.5 and -1.7 V.