Exceptionally clean single-electron transistors from solutions of molecular graphene nanoribbons

Graphene nanoribbons in quantum electronics and spintronics

Graphene has been called the wonder material, and its mechanical and electric properties never cease to amaze. The properties of graphene electronic quantum devices could be custom-tailored, if we could control the geometry of its edges at the single-atom level. Such atom-precise graphene devices would yield excellent building blocks for quantum electronics, and spintronics. 

The scientists from TU Dresden/MPI Halle/SJTU/Oxford University have joined forces to create atomically-perfect graphene nanoribbons in huge quantities, and integrated them into exceptionally clean electronic nanodevices. The result is a graphene field-effect transistor where it is possible to identify the coupling of electrons and single vibrational modes. The devices are remarkably simple to make, and allow skipping many of the time-consuming and expensive steps necessary for comparable carbon nanotube devices. As a consequence, such results could usher a new era for quantum electronic devices. This fruitful work of the joint research has been now published in the renowned journal “Nature Materials”.

This research is a joint collaboration between scientists from the Technische Universität Dresden (TUD), Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics (MPI Halle), Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) and Oxford University. The authors gratefully thank the European Union (ERC-CoG-773048-MMGNRs), the Royal Society (University Research Fellowship and grant), the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/N017188/1-QuEEN), the Norwegian State Educational Loan Fund (Keeley and Norwegian scholarships to Wadham College Oxford) and the Max Planck Gesellshaft (MPG) for financial support. We thank University of Norwich for the use of the atomic force microscopy instrument and Oxford-Advanced Research Computing (ARC) for computational time.

Reference: Niu, W.; Sopp, S.; Lodi, A.; Gee, A.; Kong, F.; Pei, T.; Gehring, P.; Nägele, J.; Lau, C. S.; Ma, J.; Liu, J.; Narita, A.; Mol, J.; Burghard, M.; Müllen, K.; Mai, Y.; Feng, X.; Bogani, L., Exceptionally clean single-electron transistors from solutions of molecular graphene nanoribbons. Nature Materials 2023, 22 (2), 180-185.