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Graphene synthesis

Nanoribbons from the bottom-up

Nature Chemistry volume 6, pages 91–92 (2014)Cite this article

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The organic synthesis of graphene nanostructures requires exceptionally efficient chemistry and is made more challenging by difficulties in characterization and processing. Now, solution-dispersible graphene nanoribbons have been synthesized on the gram scale.

Graphene has been the focus of intense research effort since it was first isolated and characterized in 20041, principally because of its potential in next-generation electronics. Substructures of graphene represent attractive targets for new materials, with properties intimately tied to their sizes and the arrangement of the six-membered rings along their edges (for example, so-called zigzag or armchair patterns). Fundamentally, graphene fragments can be constructed in two different ways. 'Top-down' approaches typically begin with exfoliation of graphite through physical or chemical means, and the resulting separated graphene sheets can be patterned by methods such as lithography. An alternative approach is to construct graphene structures from the 'bottom-up', either through epitaxial growth of graphene sheets (by using techniques such as chemical vapour deposition)2 or by applying the principles and procedures of synthetic organic chemistry.

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Figure 1: A bottom-up synthetic approach to graphene nanoribbons and their characterization using scanning tunnelling microscopy.

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  1. C. Scott Hartley is in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio 45056, USA,

    C. Scott Hartley

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  1. C. Scott Hartley
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Correspondence to C. Scott Hartley.

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Hartley, C. Nanoribbons from the bottom-up. Nature Chem 6, 91–92 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.1845

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