Ultra-narrow metallic armchair graphene nanoribbons

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Volume Title

A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä

Date

2015

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Mcode

Degree programme

Language

en

Pages

6

Series

NATURE COMMUNICATIONS, Volume 6

Abstract

Graphene nanoribbons (GNRs)—narrow stripes of graphene—have emerged as promising building blocks for nanoelectronic devices. Recent advances in bottom-up synthesis have allowed production of atomically well-defined armchair GNRs with different widths and doping. While all experimentally studied GNRs have exhibited wide bandgaps, theory predicts that every third armchair GNR (widths of N=3m+2, where m is an integer) should be nearly metallic with a very small bandgap. Here, we synthesize the narrowest possible GNR belonging to this family (five carbon atoms wide, N=5). We study the evolution of the electronic bandgap and orbital structure of GNR segments as a function of their length using low-temperature scanning tunnelling microscopy and density-functional theory calculations. Already GNRs with lengths of 5 nm reach almost metallic behaviour with ~100 meV bandgap. Finally, we show that defects (kinks) in the GNRs do not strongly modify their electronic structure.

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Keywords

graphene nanoribbons, scanning tunneling microscopy, scanning tunneling spectroscopy

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Citation

Kimouche, A, Ervasti, M, Drost, R, Halonen, S, Harju, A, Joensuu, P, Sainio, J & Liljeroth, P 2015, ' Ultra-narrow metallic armchair graphene nanoribbons ', Nature Communications, vol. 6, 10177, pp. 1-6 . https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms10177