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Large-scale solution synthesis of narrow graphene nanoribbons

2014; Nature Portfolio; Volume: 5; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1038/ncomms4189

2041-1723

Timothy H. Vo, Mikhail Shekhirev, Donna A. Kunkel, Martha Morton, Eric J. Berglund, Lingmei Kong, Peter M. Wilson, P. A. Dowben, Axel Enders, Alexander Sinitskii,

2D Materials and Applications

According to theoretical studies, narrow graphene nanoribbons with atomically precise armchair edges and widths of 10 nm and have limited control over their edge structure. Here we demonstrate a novel bottom–up approach that yields gram quantities of high-aspect-ratio graphene nanoribbons, which are only ~1 nm wide and have atomically smooth armchair edges. These ribbons are shown to have a large electronic bandgap of ~1.3 eV, which is significantly higher than any value reported so far in experimental studies of graphene nanoribbons prepared by top–down approaches. These synthetic ribbons could have lengths of >100 nm and self-assemble in highly ordered few-micrometer-long ‘nanobelts’ that can be visualized by conventional microscopy techniques, and potentially used for the fabrication of electronic devices. Theory predicts that graphene nanoribbons with width less than 2 nm exhibit bandgaps comparable to silicon, but the fabrication is challenging. Vo et al.report a bottom–up approach to synthesize bulk quantities of these materials with a bandgap of ~1.3 eV, potentially useful for electronic devices.