A paper by Tim Vo et al. on bottom-up synthesis of atomically precise nitrogen-doped graphene nanoribbons (N-GNRs) was published in Chemical Communications. The ribbons were synthesized by Yamamoto coupling of molecular precursors containing nitrogen atoms followed by cyclodehydrogenation using Scholl reaction. The paper was featured in the Chemical Communications Blog. Great job, Tim!
Appetite for Conformity: Precise Graphene Nanoribbons
Graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) are ultra-thin strips of graphene which exhibit technologically relevant optical, electronic and magnetic properties. How well these properties can be defined, understood and exploited depends on how precisely these ‘GNRs’ can be prepared. Top-down approaches to realise these materials from, for example, graphite, graphene or carbon nanotubes have been developed over recent years. However, the resultant materials are typically non-uniform, being wide, (relatively speaking) with a large amount of disorder.
In this ChemComm communication, Alexander Sinitskii and co-workers from the University of Nebraska and collaborators from the University of Puerto Rico report an elegant, controlled, bottom-up solution synthesis of well defined nitrogen doped graphene nano-ribbons. Though the materials produced are extremely insoluble, they have been extensively characterised via a range of surface analytical techniques… Read the complete story at Chemical Communications Blog.
The paper T. H. Vo, M. Shekhirev, D. A. Kunkel, F. Orange, M. J.-F. Guinel, A. Enders and A. Sinitskii. Bottom-up solution synthesis of narrow nitrogen-doped graphene nanoribbons. Chemical Communications 50 (2014) 4172-4174 was published as an Open Access article and is available at pubs.rsc.org free of charge.