Graphene nanoribbon growth on Au(100)

Yano, Masahiro   ; Asaoka, Hidehito  

Graphene nanoribbons that were bottom-up synthesized from self-assembled precursor monolayers on Au(100) and Au(111) were observed by using a scanning tunneling microscope (STM). It was revealed that the molecular orientation of the self-assembled monolayers decides the orientation direction of the graphene nanoribbons. In particular, the orientation direction of the graphene nanoribbons coincides with the one-dimensional uneven of the surface reconstruction structure on Au(100). It means that the controllability of graphene nanoribbon orientation on Au(100) is higher than that of Au(111). This is an important finding for the device application of graphene nanoribbons.