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Facile synthesis of high-quality graphene nanoribbons

Nature Nanotechnology volume 5, pages 321–325 (2010)Cite this article

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A Corrigendum to this article was published on 12 January 2011

This article has been updated

Abstract

Graphene nanoribbons have attracted attention because of their novel electronic and spin transport properties1,2,3,4,5,6, and also because nanoribbons less than 10 nm wide have a bandgap that can be used to make field-effect transistors1,2,3. However, producing nanoribbons of very high quality, or in high volumes, remains a challenge1,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18. Here, we show that pristine few-layer nanoribbons can be produced by unzipping mildly gas-phase oxidized multiwalled carbon nanotubes using mechanical sonication in an organic solvent. The nanoribbons are of very high quality, with smooth edges (as seen by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy), low ratios of disorder to graphitic Raman bands, and the highest electrical conductance and mobility reported so far (up to 5e2/h and 1,500 cm2 V−1 s−1 for ribbons 10–20 nm in width). Furthermore, at low temperatures, the nanoribbons show phase-coherent transport and Fabry–Perot interference, suggesting minimal defects and edge roughness. The yield of nanoribbons is ∼2% of the starting raw nanotube soot material, significantly higher than previous methods capable of producing high-quality narrow nanoribbons1. The relatively high-yield synthesis of pristine graphene nanoribbons will make these materials easily accessible for a wide range of fundamental and practical applications.

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Figure 1: Unzipping of nanotubes using a new two-step method in gas and liquid phases.
Figure 2: Microscopy imaging of nanoribbons.
Figure 3: Raman spectroscopy of nanoribbons.
Figure 4: Electrical transport measurements of nanoribbons.

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Change history

  • 12 January 2011

    In the version of this Letter originally published, the symbols for 'Lithography (ref. 27)' and 'Sonochemical (ref. 1)' in the legend of Figure 4d were the wrong way round. This error has now been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the text.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Microelectronics Advanced Research Corporation—Materials, Structures, and Devices Center (MARCO-MSD), Intel and the US Office of Naval Research (ONR).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry and Laboratory for Advanced Materials, Stanford University, Stanford, 94305, California, USA

    Liying Jiao, Xinran Wang, Georgi Diankov, Hailiang Wang & Hongjie Dai

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  1. Liying Jiao
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  2. Xinran Wang
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  3. Georgi Diankov
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  4. Hailiang Wang
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  5. Hongjie Dai
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Contributions

H.D. and L.J. conceived and designed the experiments. L.J., X.W., G.D. and H.W. performed the experiments and analysed the data. H.D. and L.J. co-wrote the manuscript. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Hongjie Dai.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Jiao, L., Wang, X., Diankov, G. et al. Facile synthesis of high-quality graphene nanoribbons. Nature Nanotech 5, 321–325 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2010.54

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