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Fusing tetrapyrroles to graphene edges by surface-assisted covalent coupling

Nature Chemistry volume 9, pages 33–38 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

Surface-assisted covalent linking of precursor molecules enables the fabrication of low-dimensional nanostructures, which include graphene nanoribbons. One approach to building functional multicomponent systems involves the lateral anchoring of organic heteromolecules to graphene. Here we demonstrate the dehydrogenative coupling of single porphines to graphene edges on the same metal substrate as used for graphene synthesis. The covalent linkages are visualized by scanning probe techniques with submolecular resolution, which directly reveals bonding motifs and electronic features. Distinct configurations are identified that can be steered towards entities predominantly fused to graphene edges through two pyrrole rings by thermal annealing. Furthermore, we succeeded in the concomitant metallation of the macrocycle with substrate atoms and the axial ligation of adducts. Such processes combined with graphene–nanostructure synthesis has the potential to create complex materials systems with tunable functionalities.

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Figure 1: STM images and corresponding models that show the experimental procedure.
Figure 2: STM and AFM data of distinct covalent-coupling configurations at the graphene edge.
Figure 3: Metallation and ligation of graphene-anchored tetrapyrrole macrocycles.
Figure 4: Low-energy electronic structure of the porphine/graphene interface.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank A. Riss for fruitful discussions. We are grateful for support from the European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant MolArt (no. 247299), the Munich Centre for Advanced Photonics and the TUM Institute for Advanced Study funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) via the German Excellence Initiative as well as the European Union Seventh Framework Programme under grant agreement no. 291763. W.A. acknowledges funding from the DFG via a Heisenberg professorship and from the ERC Consolidator Grant NanoSurfs (no. 615233). M.B. acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation under award DMR-1204924. M.G. acknowledges financial support from the Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship (Project 2D Nano, no. 658070).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Physik-Department E20, Technische Universität München, James-Franck-Straße 1, Garching, D-85748, Germany

    Yuanqin He, Manuela Garnica, Felix Bischoff, Jacob Ducke, Willi Auwärter & Johannes V. Barth

  2. Institute for Advanced Study, Technische Universität München, Lichtenbergstraße 2a, Garching, D-85748, Germany

    Yuanqin He & Matthias Batzill

  3. Department of Chemistry, UMR ENS-CNRS-UPMC 8640, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, F-75005, France

    Marie-Laure Bocquet

  4. Department of Physics, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida 33620, USA

    Matthias Batzill

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Contributions

W.A. and J.V.B. conceived and designed the experiments. Y.H., F.B., J.D. and M.G. performed the experiments. Y.H., F.B., J.D. and M.G. analysed the data. M.-L.B. performed the calculations. M.G., W.A., Y.H., M.B. and J.V.B. co-wrote the paper. All the authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Willi Auwärter.

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He, Y., Garnica, M., Bischoff, F. et al. Fusing tetrapyrroles to graphene edges by surface-assisted covalent coupling. Nature Chem 9, 33–38 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.2600

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