Doping of Graphene Nanoribbons via Functional Group Edge Modification

ACS Nano - 2017    
Eduard Carbonell-Sanromà, Jeremy Hieulle, Manuel Vilas-Varela, Pedro Brandimarte, Mikel Iraola, Ana Barragán, Jingcheng Li, Mikel Abadia, Martina Corso, Daniel Sánchez-Portal, Diego Peña, and Jose Ignacio Pascual
Abstract

We report the on-surface synthesis of 7-armchair graphene nanoribbons (7-AGNRs) substituted with nitrile (CN) functional groups. The CN groups are attached to the GNR backbone by modifying the 7-AGNR precursor. Whereas many of these groups survive the on-surface synthesis, the reaction process causes the cleavage of some CN from the ribbon backbone and the on-surface cycloisomerization of few nitriles onto pyridine rings. Scanning tunneling spectroscopy and density functional theory reveal that CN groups behave as very efficient n-dopants, significantly downshifting the bands of the ribbon and introducing deep impurity levels associated with the nitrogen electron lone pairs.

Press release
Bibtex citation
@Article{Carbonell-Sanroma2017a,
  author    = {Eduard Carbonell-Sanrom{\`{a}} and Jeremy Hieulle and Manuel Vilas-Varela and Pedro Brandimarte and Mikel Iraola and Ana Barrag{\'{a}}n and Jingcheng Li and Mikel Abadia and Martina Corso and Daniel S{\'{a}}nchez-Portal and Diego Pe{\~{n}}a and Jose Ignacio Pascual},
  title     = {Doping of Graphene Nanoribbons \textit{via} Functional Group Edge Modification},
  journal   = {ACS Nano},
  year      = {2017},
  volume    = {11},
  number    = {7},
  pages     = {7355--7361},
  issn      = {1936--0851},
  doi       = {10.1021/acsnano.7b03522},
  publisher = {American Chemical Society ({ACS})},
}
Key words
  • graphene nanoribbons
  • chemical functionalization
  • scanning tunneling microscopy
  • electronic structure
  • density functional theory