Graphene nanoribbons initiated from molecularly derived seeds

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 13; no. 1; pp. 2992 - 10
• Main Authors: Way, Austin J., Jacobberger, Robert M., Guisinger, Nathan P., Saraswat, Vivek, Zheng, Xiaoqi, Suresh, Anjali, Dwyer, Jonathan H., Gopalan, Padma, Arnold, Michael S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 30-05-2022; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 140/133; 142/126; 147/135; 147/138; 147/3; 639/301/357/918/1055; 639/925/357/551; 639/925/357/918/1052; Aromatic hydrocarbons; Aspect ratio; Cardiovascular Diseases; Catalysis; Catalysts; Chemical synthesis; Chemical vapor deposition; Field effect transistors; Graphene; Graphite - chemistry; Humanities and Social Sciences; Humans; Methane; multidisciplinary; Nanoelectronics; Nanoribbons; Nanotubes, Carbon - chemistry; Organic chemistry; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Seeds; Semiconductor devices; Vapors
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-30563-6

Semiconducting graphene nanoribbons are promising materials for nanoelectronics but are held back by synthesis challenges. Here we report that molecular-scale carbon seeds can be exploited to initiate the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) synthesis of graphene to generate one-dimensional graphene nanoribbons narrower than 5 nm when coupled with growth phenomena that selectively extend seeds along a single direction. This concept is demonstrated by subliming graphene-like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon molecules onto a Ge(001) catalyst surface and then anisotropically evolving size-controlled nanoribbons from the seeds along
110
of Ge(001) via CH
4
CVD. Armchair nanoribbons with mean normalized standard deviation as small as 11% (3 times smaller than nanoribbons nucleated without seeds), aspect ratio as large as 30, and width as narrow as 2.6 nm (tunable via CH
4
exposure time) are realized. Two populations of nanoribbons are compared in field-effect transistors (FETs), with off-current differing by 150 times because of the nanoribbons’ different widths.
The authors report on harnessing sp2-organic molecules as a basis for uniformly initiating the homoepitaxial-like, size-controlled, synthesis of sub-5 nm semiconducting graphene nanoribbons for electronics via chemical vapor deposition.