Facile preparation of Au(111)/mica substrates for high-quality graphene nanoribbon synthesis

  • chair:

    Hell, M. G. / Senkovskiy, B. V. / Fedorov, A. V. / Nefedov, A. / Wöll, C. / Grüneis, A. (2016) 

  • place:

    Phys. Status Solidi B 253, 2016, 12, 2362–2365, DOI 10.1002/pssb.201600254 

  • Date: August 2016

Abstract

A setup for the preparation of oriented Au(111)/mica thin films of math formula100 nm thickness as an active substrate for graphene nanoribbon growth is shown. Low-energy electron diffraction shows that the Au(111) thin films have a single crystallographic orientation over the whole surface area. Graphene nanoribbons are synthesized by the bottom-up approach via surface polymerization of precursor molecules that are evaporated onto the catalytically active Au(111)/mica substrate. The graphene nanoribbons are investigated by a combination of resonance Raman, X-ray photoemission spectroscopy, and near-edge X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy confirming a nanoribbon quality equal to nanoribbons grown on commercially available single-crystal Au(111) substrates. The present work, therefore, establishes the math formula preparation of Au(111)/mica as an inexpensive and simple method to prepare substrates of desired shape and thickness for surface polymerization reactions which are of interest to a growing community of researchers working on graphene nanoribbons.

 

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