Bottom-up fabrication of atomically precise graphene nanoribbons

TL;DR

This paper reviews the bottom-up synthesis of atomically precise graphene nanoribbons, emphasizing the importance of atomic-level control for tuning their electronic and magnetic properties for various applications.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the synthesis methods, structure-property relationships, and potential applications of atomically precise GNRs, highlighting recent advances in on-surface fabrication techniques.

Findings

Atomic precision is crucial for GNR tunability.

On-surface synthesis enables controlled GNR fabrication.

GNR properties can be tailored via width, edge structure, and heteroatoms.

Abstract

Graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) make up an extremely interesting class of materials. On the one hand GNRs share many of the superlative properties of graphene, while on the other hand they display an exceptional degree of tunability of their optoelectronic properties. The presence or absence of correlated low-dimensional magnetism, or of a widely tunable band gap, is determined by the boundary conditions imposed by the width, crystallographic symmetry and edge structure of the nanoribbons. In combination with additional controllable parame-ters like the presence of heteroatoms, tailored strain, or the formation of hetero-structures, the possibilities to shape the electronic properties of GNRs according to our needs are fantastic. However, to really benefit from that tunability and harness the opportunities offered by GNRs, atomic precision is strictly required in their synthesis. This can be achieved through an on-surface synthesis approach, in which one lets appropriately designed precursor molecules to react in a selective way that ends up forming GNRs. In this chapter we review the structure-property relations inherent to GNRs, the synthesis approach and the ways in which the var-ied properties of the resulting ribbons have been probed, finalizing with selected examples of demonstrated GNR applications.