Tip Growth of Quasi-Metallic Bilayer Graphene Nanoribbons with Armchair Chirality

Shuo Lou; Bosai Lyu; Jiajun Chen; Xianliang Zhou; Wenwu Jiang; Lu Qiu; Peiyue Shen; Saiqun Ma; Zhichun Zhang; Yufeng Xie; Zhenghan Wu; Yi Chen; Kunqi Xu; Qi Liang; Kenji Watanabe; Takashi Taniguchi; Lede Xian; Guangyu Zhang; Wengen Ouyang; Feng Ding; Zhiwen Shi

doi:10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c03534

Tip Growth of Quasi-Metallic Bilayer Graphene Nanoribbons with Armchair Chirality

Nano Lett. 2024 Jan 10;24(1):156-164. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c03534. Epub 2023 Dec 26.

Authors

Shuo Lou^{1

2}, Bosai Lyu^{1

2}, Jiajun Chen^{1

2}, Xianliang Zhou^{1

2}, Wenwu Jiang^{3

4}, Lu Qiu^{5

6}, Peiyue Shen^{1

2}, Saiqun Ma^{1

2}, Zhichun Zhang^{1

2}, Yufeng Xie^{1

2}, Zhenghan Wu^{1

2}, Yi Chen^{1

2}, Kunqi Xu^{1

2}, Qi Liang^{1

2}, Kenji Watanabe⁷, Takashi Taniguchi⁸, Lede Xian^{9

10

11}, Guangyu Zhang^{9

12

13}, Wengen Ouyang^{3

4}, Feng Ding^{5

6

14}, Zhiwen Shi^{1

2

15}

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Artificial Structures and Quantum Control (Ministry of Education), Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, School of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China.
² Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.
³ Department of Engineering Mechanics, School of Civil Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan, Hubei 430072, China.
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering Science, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China.
⁵ Centre for Multidimensional Carbon Materials, Institute for Basic Science, Ulsan 44919, South Korea.
⁶ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Ulsan 44919, South Korea.
⁷ Research Center for Functional Materials, National Institute for Materials Science, 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba 305-0044, Japan.
⁸ International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics, National Institute for Materials Science, 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba 305-0044, Japan.
⁹ Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory, Dongguan, Guangdong 523808, China.
¹⁰ Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter, Center for Free Electron Laser Science, 22761 Hamburg, Germany.
¹¹ Hefei National Research Center for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.
¹² Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics and Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
¹³ School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
¹⁴ Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen 518055, China.
¹⁵ Tsung-Dao Lee Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China.

PMID: 38147652
DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c03534

Abstract

Graphene nanoribbons (GNRs), quasi one-dimensional (1D) narrow strips of graphene, have shown promise for high-performance nanoelectronics due to their exceptionally high carrier mobility and structurally tunable bandgaps. However, producing chirality-uniform GNRs on insulating substrates remains a big challenge. Here, we report the successful growth of bilayer GNRs with predominantly armchair chirality and ultranarrow widths (<5 nm) on insulating hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) substrates using chemical vapor deposition (CVD). The growth of GNRs is catalyzed by transition metal nanoparticles, including Fe, Co, and Ni, through a unique tip-growth mechanism. Notably, GNRs catalyzed by Ni exhibit a high purity (97.3%) of armchair chirality. Electron transport measurements indicate that the ultrathin bilayer armchair GNRs exhibit quasi-metallic behavior. This quasi-metallicity is further supported by density functional theory (DFT) calculations, which reveal a significantly reduced bandgap in bilayer armchair GNRs. The chirality-specific GNRs reported here offer promising advancements for the application of graphene in nanoelectronics.

Keywords: armchair chirality; chemical vapor deposition; graphene nanoribbons; quasi-metallicity; tip-growth mode.