Porphyrin-fused graphene nanoribbons

Qiang Chen*, Alessandro Lodi, Heng Zhang, Alex Gee, Hai I. Wang, Fanmiao Kong, Michael Clarke, Matthew Edmondson, Jack Hart, James N. O’Shea, Wojciech Stawski, Jonathan Baugh, Akimitsu Narita, Alex Saywell, Mischa Bonn, Klaus Müllen, Lapo Bogani*, Harry L. Anderson*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Graphene nanoribbons (GNRs), nanometre-wide strips of graphene, are promising materials for fabricating electronic devices. Many GNRs have been reported, yet no scalable strategies are known for synthesizing GNRs with metal atoms and heteroaromatic units at precisely defined positions in the conjugated backbone, which would be valuable for tuning their optical, electronic and magnetic properties. Here we report the solution-phase synthesis of a porphyrin-fused graphene nanoribbon (PGNR). This PGNR has metalloporphyrins fused into a twisted fjord-edged GNR backbone; it consists of long chains (>100 nm), with a narrow optical bandgap (~1.0 eV) and high local charge mobility (>400 cm2 V–1 s–1 by terahertz spectroscopy). We use this PGNR to fabricate ambipolar field-effect transistors with appealing switching behaviour, and single-electron transistors displaying multiple Coulomb diamonds. These results open an avenue to π-extended nanostructures with engineerable electrical and magnetic properties by transposing the coordination chemistry of porphyrins into graphene nanoribbons. (Figure presented.)

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1133-1140
Number of pages8
JournalNature Chemistry
Volume16
Issue number7
Early online date8 Mar 2024
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jul 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2024.

Funding

We thank the European Union (grant nos. ERC-AdG-885606 ARO-MAT, ERC-CoG-773048-MMGNR and Pathfinder-101099676-4D-NMR) and the EPSRC (grant nos. EP/N014995/1, EP/N017188/1 and EP/R029229/1) for financial support. Q.C. is grateful to the German Research Foundation for a Walter Benjamin fellowship (grant no. CH 2577/1-1). Q.C., A.N. and K.M. acknowledge the financial support from the Max Planck Society and the ANR-DFG NLE Grant GRANAO by DFG 431450789. H.I.W. acknowledges funding from the DFG (grant no. 514772236). A.S. and L.B. thank the Royal Society for support via University Research Fellowships. We thank P. Holdway for measuring XPS and also thank S. P. Fletcher, H. Bayley, J. M. Goicoechea, I. McCulloch and N. Rees for their help on chiral resolution, circular dichroism measurement, Raman measurement, GPC analysis and solid-state NMR measurement. Computational services were provided by the Advanced Research Computing Service at the University of Oxford.

FundersFunder number
ANR-DFG
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research CouncilEP/N017188/1, EP/N014995/1, EP/R029229/1
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
Royal Society
European CommissionERC-CoG-773048-MMGNR, ERC-AdG-885606 ARO-MAT, Pathfinder-101099676-4D-NMR
European Commission
Deutsche ForschungsgemeinschaftCH 2577/1-1, 431450789, 514772236
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

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