Bottom-up Synthesis and Characterization of Porous 12-Atom-Wide Armchair Graphene Nanoribbons
Qitang Fan, Zilin Ruan, Simon Werner, Tim Naumann, Rustem Bolat, Jose Martinez‐Castro, Tabea Koehler, Tobias Vollgraff, Wolfgang Hieringer, Raviraj Mandalia, Christian Neiß, Andreas Görling, F. Stefan Tautz, Jörg Sundermeyer, J. Michael Gottfried
Abstract
Although several porous carbon/graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) have been prepared, a direct comparison of the electronic properties between a nonporous GNR and its periodically perforated counterpart is still missing. Here, we report the synthesis of porous 12-atom-wide armchair-edged GNRs from a bromoarene precursor on a Au(111) surface via hierarchical Ullmann and dehydrogenative coupling. The selective formation of porous 12-GNRs was achieved through thermodynamic and kinetic reaction control combined with tailored precursor design. The structure and electronic properties of the porous 12-GNR were elucidated by scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy and density functional theory calculations, revealing that the pores induce a 2.17 eV band gap increase compared to the nonporous 12-AGNR on the same surface.